


Anders in Autumn

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Autumn, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Labor Unions, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, transformative justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26743549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Anders and Fenris, over the course of one gorgeous autumn in Kirkwall, find common ground, a common goal, and even tenderness, as the city grows cool and vibrant in the changing of the year. Justice returns to the streets of Kirkwall, one way or another, and it is as transformative and loving as justice truly is.an answer to an artober challenge from cozy-autumn-prompts
Relationships: Anders & Hawke, Anders & Justice (Dragon Age), Anders & Maddox, Anders & Merrill (Dragon Age), Anders & Varric Tethras, Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 88
Collections: nice fics





	1. falling leaves

Autumn in the Wounded Coast is a miserable affair, and Anders finds himself nostalgic for the woods of Amaranthine. Velanna liked to go hunting, and Mahariel would get a whole party together when Tabris and Cousland could get away from their own territories. Cousland ruled Highever now, with his brother, and Tabris was working on establishing Denerim’s alienage as the center of elvhen political life in Ferelden. They were all too busy for the hunt, too concerned with the slowness of inching forward incremental change. He missed them, Velanna and Mahariel and Sigrun especially. Lost in thought, Anders trips over a rock.  
  
Fenris snaps, “Careful. We’re almost to the Sundermount, you don’t want to wake up the ancestors.”  
  
“Not my fault your ancestors picked the most depressing part of Thedas to bury themselves. _The Wounded Coast_ , who names these places?” Anders grumbles.  
  
“I know, right?” Hawke chimes in. They’re in a good mood. They’re always in a good mood. They throw their arms up and grab at both of them. Fenris shies away from the touch. “The Wounded Coast--what are we going to find next? The Injured Cliffs? Right next to Massive-Head-Trauma-Bay?”  
  
Anders laughs. “That’s just the docks in Darktown. By my clinic.” Justice stirs at the back of the mind and he thinks about the young Ferelden dockworker Athenril brought in yesterday, with both eyes bruised and a cut lip, his stubborn silence. Hawke’s been doing the best they can, shaking down the gangs that prey on the poor and weak in Kirkwall, but it is never enough.  
  
They travel deeper into the woods, up the Sundermount, and as they pass the air clears. Anders can’t taste the soot of the foundry anymore, and the soil of the forest is hungry and growing. The leaves crunch underfoot and there is something about early autumn and this clean, crisp air that tastes like hunger, like roasting the best of foods over a fire. He stops to drink it in, smiling, and looks up at the brilliant fire of the leaves against the gray sky. A seawind ruffles his air and tosses the leaves spiralling down, and Anders clutches his staff and laughs as they float around him, like tongues of flame. This is what magic is, this is the whole point: the world, briefly, in perfect harmony. The thought is him and Justice.  
  
Hawke’s squinting at some halla tracks, but Fenris stops to look back at him. They catch each other’s gaze in the falling leaves and hold for a second. Anders notices Fenris is rooting his feet in the forest carpet.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” he says, not wanting to pick a fight. “Never got walks like this in the Circle.”  
  
“Yes,” Fenris says. “Not in Seheron either.”  
  
This is what magic is, Justice repeats in his mind, this is the whole point: the world in brief, in perfect harmony, the dying of the leaves these fiery colors, so they flame in your mind and keep you alive. You have this moment of beauty: so should we all. That is the whole point: these moments of grace, for all.


	2. pumpkins & cinnamon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders fusses over a cat.

“Aw, is the poor baby sick?” Merrill squeals, squatting down to regard Messere Pounce-the-Second. The cat, constipated and annoyed, flicks its ears in warning. “Have you tried pumpkin? That’s what Variel would use for the halla.” She hesitates. Marethari barred the clan from speaking to her, though somehow Hawke and Fenris were exempt from this rule. Sometimes Anders would see a Dalish hunter leave a note with Varric at the Hanged Man, though. It’s hard to make a clean break. For all his running, Anders knows that, leaving his heart and name behind from his mother’s house to the Circle to Circle, Amaranthine, now Kirkwall. He could write his mother, Isabella would know how to get a letter to the Anderfels discreetly: but what could he say? It wasn’t right it wasn’t right it wasn’t right.   
  
“Yep,” he says. Gently he strokes Messere Pounce-the-Second. “But I think I’m going to have to...clean him out manually.” Messere Pounce, generally uncomfortable, swats at his hand: poor boy. If he didn’t figure this out soon, he’d be suffering worse: how horrible, the little ways living things suffer, if we don’t work together, how many living things exist in the world with unnecessary pain. Justice flares and Anders shakes his head. Why would pain have to be necessary? Because sometimes that is the only way one learns.   
  
“All this fuss for a cat?” Fenris says. “Why bother?”   
  
“Because he’s in pain,” Anders snaps. “Because I can stop it. Because if I can, I should. Though I suppose such concepts are beyond you.”   
  
Fenris scowls, but Merrill says mildly, “No fighting. Look.” Anders glances out the corner of his eye and sees a woman watching them, too well-dressed and clean to be Darktown or Lowtown.   
  
“Templar,” he murmurs. Justice says: let her learn, but he scoops up Messere Pounce-the-Second and says, “Why don’t you two come into the clinic? I’m making a pie out of the leftover pumpkin, it should be done soon.” Even Meredith wouldn’t try and start shit in the clinic, not in daylight at least, and at night he had five different gangs watching him, the only neutral ground near the Foundry. She wouldn’t dare, not yet.   
  
Fenris scoffs. “Right. A pie from the cat’s leftovers. Rather than soothing the cat with  _ your _ leftovers. Your priorities…”   
  
Anders laughs. “What can I say? I believe in the right for all free-willed creatures to have pumpkin pie.”   
  
“And to shit well,” Merrill adds brightly. “All that fiber! It’ll ease things up for days.”


	3. blankets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders hands out blankets during a flood. Fenris admits he does good work, despite the demon in his head.

He’s setting up beds with Lirene in the front room of the clinic when the skies open, and people come streaming in to get out of the rain as thunder rolls over the city of Kirkwall. He looks up and through the door, watching the rain shift the sludge of Darktown’s streets towards the harbor. People will be cold, too many people will be left outside tonight. Justice twinges at the back of his mind and Anders scratches a quick heating sigil into the wall, and everyone looks away as heat begins to circulate and a mysterious minty breeze keeps the space from stinking too badly. He keeps passing out blankets. He’ll have to ask Varric about buying lye to wash everything afterward. Magic couldn’t do everything, though it could, it should, if he had time and space and freedom to rediscover it. Anders rubs his forehead: hygiene spells exist? Justice likes dropping ancient knowledge as if he knows it already, because he should know it already, something terrible had happened to the world but that was not for him to know. It would be corrected yet.   
  
The room falls silent and Anders’ hackles rise. He turns, expecting the Carta trying yet another shakedown, but it’s an elf instead, sodden and grumpy. Anders, amused and relieved, smiles. “Ah. You.” Lightning flashes and Fenris’ expression grows even more sour.   
  
“Yes, me.” He steps in and shakes his head like a wet dog, scattering raindrops. Anders tries not to laugh. “I got stuck in the rain.”   
  
“I gathered that,” Anders says. The tension in the room dissipates slowly. The denizens of Darktown are curled in their blankets now, and he can smell stew simmering over the fire. Hawke donated two whole cows yesterday, and one of them got stolen, but the other will feed the street for a week, if they boil the bones enough. He would have liked to keep one for milk for the children, but sometimes needs must, needs must. “Are you hungry? Cold?”   
  
Fenris folds his arms. “How long do you think the rain will last?” Thunder rumbles again, and Anders cannot help but feel good. His people are warm enough, dry enough, and soon they will be fed. Even Fenris cannot spoil that.   
  
“Probably all night,” he says. “You’re welcome to stay. Looks like it might flood.”   
  
“Aren’t you worried about the clinic?”   
  
“Oh, no, I’ve taken care of that,” he waves a hand. “Magic is meant to serve man and all that.”   
  
Fenris grunts. “And  _ not _ to rule over them.” Anders rolls his eyes, but does not press the point. Justice took him to task last time he ranted at Fenris, reminding him that the Imperium is unjust, what was done to Fenris is unjust, and dismissing that is not only unjust, but needlessly cruel and detrimental to the movement. Sometimes possession is like having a Chantry mother reading you a sermon in the back of your head, at all times, sometimes a comforting murmur, sometimes a full lecture. It is much less entertaining than the Circle made it out to be.   
  
“What do you think I’m doing?” he says. “Enslaving people to my evil, abomination will by feeding them and giving out blankets? Is that how you think it works?” Justice stirs in the back of his mind. It hasn’t decided whose side it will be on today.   
  
Fenris looks taken aback for a moment, but only for a moment. The rain continues to batter the roof: the streets will definitely flood tonight. “I approve of what you’re doing,” he says stiffly. “Though I do not understand how you can stand to be so--open with it all. To the demon inside of you. How you make it work.”   
  
“It’s not like that.” Anders closes his eyes. “It’s like your tattoos. Useful sometimes, but...I asked for this. I offered. I didn’t know what I was getting into, so it’s not a violation. It isn’t.” A feeling of hot shame pours through him, and just as suddenly disappears. He puts his hand to his heart. Was that him, or was that Justice? Hard to tell, these days.   
  
“My sister said I asked for these too,” Fenris says. Perhaps it is the rain prompting this intimacy, perhaps it is because they are lonely, perhaps it is because Hawke isn’t there to turn the conversation away from when they start digging at each other. Still, Anders is uncomfortable, and he gets up to fetch them food. Lirene gives him an unfathomable look and hands him his favorite shawl too, that Mahariel wove him. He’d assumed someone who needed it more took it. Pleasantly surprised, feeling warm, he returns, and he and Fenris find a couple stools and sit down together, watching the rain and eating. Anders tells Fenris about the refugees from Seheron that he helped onto Rivain before the rain came in, Fenris says quietly there should be a couple elves who only speak Tevene and Elvhen coming in the next week, and for once conversation is easy, as long as they keep it to the clinic, the things they care about.   
  
At the next strike of lightning, Fenris startles and shivers. He almost drops his bowl, and Anders, worried, reaches a hand out. The shawl slips to the ground. Fenris picks it back up.    
  
“Sorry,” he says gruffly.   
  
“Flashback?” Anders says tentatively.   
  
“Mm.” Fenris sets the bowl aside carefully and studies the shawl. “This is Dalish. Elvhen. We use this pattern in Tevinter too.”   
  
“The Hero of Ferelden gave me that,” he says. “Thought I lost it, but Lirene found it. It’s from Clan Alerion.”   
  
Fenris hands it back, and their hands brush as he takes it. They look at each other as the rain comes battering down, and Anders thinks, he must be cold. I could keep him warm.


	4. by the fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela throws Fenris a party after he kills Danarius. Hawke brings Sebastian Vael.

Fenris is burning everything Danarius left in the house, and Varric decides that it’s a party and everyone is invited. He comes to the clinic to drag him away from his work, and when they finally arrive, after nearly being mugged twice, there is a bonfire merrily burning the various creepy Tevinter statues in the main hall. Isabela is leading a dance around it. Fenris, though, is leaning against the wall. The flames dance over his face merrily. Anders has seen him smile before, but not like this: the slightly-manic triumph of excising an old demon. He felt that way when he burned--or tried to burn--his old Warden uniform. He walks over.   
  
“Nice party,” he says.   
  
Fenris lounges against the wall. “I have no idea who any of these people are.” He waves a hand. Anders notices he is gripping a bottle of a very fine Tevinter vintage in the other. “Isabela brought them all, as she does. Oh.” He straightens up. “There’s Hawke.”   
  
Hawke is looking worried. Anders exchanges a quick glance with Fenris. Hawke only makes that face when they know they’ve done something foolish. Fenris takes a gulp from the bottle and nearly sputters. Anders reaches to pat him on the back, grinning. Fenris has never been much of a binge-drinker.    
  
Hawke comes with a gorgeous brunette with the bluest eyes in tow, in Chantry-white armor. Anders looks him up and down, down, down, then snickers. He has a face on his crotch. He notices the crown around the enamel: the man’s got  _ Andraste _ ’s face on his crotch.   
  
“Oh my,” Fenris says, “is that supposed to be a chastity belt?”   
  
At this point Merrill detaches, whirling from the circle dance. She throws her arms around both of them. “Oh, you should throw parties more often, Fenris,” she says happily. “I’ve never met such nice people! Marethari never liked it when  _ we  _ burned things, even when it was just shem statuary.”   
  
“Speaking of,” Anders points to the man, “look at that. Wait--what sort of shem statuary are you talking about?”   
  
Merrill’s hands are cold, digging into their shoulders. “Oh, you know. One of your little temples, that a sister had built on one of the People’s oldest surviving shrines in Ferelden. It was Mahariel’s idea, so I think we’ve all been officially pardoned, if that means anything in Kirkwall.” Anders starts laughing. Merrill always seems so sweet and bumbling, and then she’ll casually mention something like  _ that _ , and he will remember that it takes steel and cunning and a sense of humor for an apostate to survive, blood magic or not. He has always admired and feared her audacity. Justice stirs: she walks on the right side between sacrifice and self-abuse. He thinks, for now..   
  
Fenris pulls away from the two of them as Hawke approaches, with his guest. “So what’s this?” he says. “A client? Who do you need us to kill?”   
  
“We don’t always get hired to kill, Fenris,” Merrill chimes up. She is eying the armor up. “We can do other...things.” She squints at him. “Do you know you have a woman’s face on your groin? Did you do that on purpose? Is that a sex thing? If you did that among the Dalish, it’d be for sex, but you’d get laughed at for not being subtle.” She studies him. “Though I suppose with the white armor, you’re not trying to be subtle, are you?”   
  
“Right,” Hawke says. For once, they have decided to be diplomatic. “Er, this is Prince Sebastian Vael of Tantervale--”   
  
“Starkhaven,” the prince interrupts.   
  
“Starkhaven,” Hawke corrects, “and he has joined me as a companion while we investigate how his family was slaughtered and he was ousted from his throne. But before we begin our investigation, I thought we could grab a drink first. And Danarius’ cellars are open, right?”   
  
Fenris stretches out his arms. “Mine now.”   
  
“Danarius?” Sebastian says. “Danarius of House Danarius, of Tevinter? The magister?” He looks nervous. Anders has always liked making Chantry boys nervous. Sebastian licks his lips, and Anders bites his lip. He’s skittish, he has always liked that.   
  
Everyone pauses. “What other House could it be?” Merrill whispers. She squints at his groin again. “Fascinating.” Sometimes Merrill talks as if she is conducting some sort of experiment on the people around her. For once, Anders doesn’t mind it. A blood mage, an abomination, a runaway slave, and the prince of one of the most pious states of Free Marches walk into a bar: what will the punchline be?   
  
“Ah,” Fenris says. He has decided to be gracious. “I see you’ve heard of my former master. Feel free to join in our libations. We killed him yesterday.” Sebastian looks blank. Anders laughs. “Welcome to the party. It’s not my party, it’s Isabela, though I suppose this is my house now.  _ Victori da spolia _ ,” he ends in Tevene, and Anders is charmed. “These are my friends. Well, Hawke’s friends.”   
  
“Yeah, Fenris doesn’t have friends,” Merrill says seriously. “Only people he’s forced to put up with. Like us! I’m Merrill. That’s Anders.”   
  
Anders gently pushes Merrill off of him. “Hi,” he says. He cannot stop staring at the prince’s groin. “Is that supposed to be Andraste on your crotch?” Hawke catches his eye and mouths: stop it. Anders smirks.   
  
“What?” The prince is aghast. Fenris stifles a laugh. Merrill is almost purring with amusement.   
  
Anders points. He can’t help himself. “That...belt buckle thing. We were discussing it. Is that Andraste?”   
  
“My father had this belt commissioned when I took my vows at a brother,” Sebastian says stiffly.   
  
“You brought a  _ Chantry brother _ ,” Fenris mutters. “Don’t tell Isabela.”   
  
“Nice,” Anders says. “What’d the other brothers think? Don’t you all take vows of chastity? I’m just not so sure I'd want them seeing me shove the Maker’s Bride between my legs every morning.” Everyone is silent. Fenris has his face entirely turned to the wall, to hide his expression. Anders looks at Hawke and raises an eyebrow. If he’s a Chantry brother, there would be no way he’d let them bed him. Hawke looks at Sebastian, who is utterly aghast, and opens their mouth to say something, anything, but Merrill butts in.   
  
“I’ll never understand human religion,” she despairs. “Is she a fertility symbol, then? But why the chastity?” Anders laughs and heads to the bonfire. Fenris follows him.   
  
“Don’t leave me alone with Merrill in a mood,” Fenris says. “She wants me to take her to Tevinter.” He offers Anders a swig from the bottle and he takes it. The wine burns down his throat. Hawke was right, actually. Tevinter wine does taste like the tears of miserable slaves. Magic does some weird shit to the fermentation process. Anders thinks, this could taste better if they were treated better. If people actually liked the work they were doing. If they could enjoy the fruit of their labor. It could be better. They watch Isabela throw yet another painting into the fire. She just likes burning things, but so do they all, that’s why they’re here.   
  
“Are you planning on leaving?” Anders asks. “Isn’t it safer for you to...lay low for awhile?”   
  
Fenris crosses his arms. “Is that a note of concern I detect, mage?”   
  
“I’ve grown used to patching up your ever-so-shiny wounds,” he says. “But really...things are heating up with the mages. The alchemist you brought from Seheron’s really shaken things up.”   
  
Fenris considers him. They’re inching closer now. Anders doesn’t know if it’s the drink, or the bonfire, or the elf’s own lyrium-heat, but he’s drawn closer like a cat. “You’d miss me,” he concludes.   
  
“You’re drunk.” He is afraid: of what? He feels like they are on the precipice, and he is not yet drunk enough to take the leap. Fenris’ tattoos shine brilliantly in the firelight, and he wants to touch them. He looks away.   
  
Fenris chuckles wryly. “So I am! I am drunk! And I deserve to be!” Suddenly he throws the bottle into the bonfire, and everyone cheers. “For Seheron!” he yells. “For Varania! Victori da spolia!”   
  
The dancers yell back, “Victori da spolia!” and cheer. They drink through the night, laughing and dancing, but Justice echoes at the back of Anders’ mind, reminding him that it is not so simple, that they cannot stay in this stasis, one day he must shake Kirkwall to its very roots to expose the corruption embedded in its foundation. They circle around the bonfire, hand-in-hand, and he knows that all things must change. To the victor, the spoils: Fenris cannot be the only slave who wins.


	5. cold toes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the clinic, Anders tries not to hear a large group of dockworkers and a mysterious Dalish woman talk over what to do about all the workplace injuries the laborers have been suffering. Fenris arrives, sent by Varric to drag him to a party, and to Anders' surprise, Fenris knows far more about the injustices the dockworkers suffer than he does--and he is far more involved.

Autumn is the springtime for big cities: Tabris told him that, at the first Wintersend party Mahariel threw as arlessa of Amaranthine. Though it wasn’t Wintersend, Anders corrected himself, the two of them called it something different. Kirkwall was bleak in winter, smelly in spring, and downright dank in summer. Autumn, though, gave the city a bit of a blush. Kirkwall’s usual drab limestone cliffs and houses were brightened by the pepper-tipped trees, and Anders particularly savoured one whose leaves turned a deep royal purple. He took a leaf that fell and pocketed it, and pinned it to a wall on the clinic. The kids who lingered around his clinic took to it and started bringing leaves, and over the course of one crisp afternoon, they had the whole facade decorated with the brightest leaves they could find. Anders wanted badly to enchant it to last, but Varric couldn’t pay off Cullen forever. He had to let it leave.   
  
A messenger came by while he was mourning the nature of decay, one of Varric’s runners. Varric was having a party at the Hanged Man and expected him to come, or else he’d send Fenris drag him. Anders made a face at that: Fenris. The tension had eased, over the years, and Fenris had ceded the point about the Circle after Bethany was kidnapped by the Templars, just after they had finally returned from the Deep Roads. Leandra’s wailing had disturbed them both deeply, and it had been almost impossible to hold Justice back. He still remembered the way his mother had fought. He really ought to talk to Isabela about sending that letter.   
  
The golden hour darkened on the wrinkled leaves pinned to the front of his shop and evening cooled the streets of Kirkwall. The clinic got busy: there was an accident at the docks, one of the elvhen labourers had nearly been crushed, and the man’s husband was weeping as Anders healed him, because they could not afford the time off for him to rest the leg and heal proper. Anders was angry, a low burning in his stomach, but he focused on strengthening bone and mending cracks, and encouraging muscles to repair. When night fell, several other dockworkers came by to check on his patient, and he made them all a stew--stone soup, as usual--as they talked in hushed, urgent whispers about what to do next. This was the third injury this much, with the foremen rushing them since winter and choppy seas were coming, and they weren’t paying overtime or injury pay either. He was pleased to see a couple Fereldens there too, and even two Dalish--none of them from Sabrae, of course, but a couple around his age. They stayed quiet and listened, mostly, but Anders was curious. The man didn’t have vallaslin, but the woman had what looked like a branching tree outlined in thick purple lines across her face. The others seemed comfortable around them, though he himself had never seen them before: weird. Fenris might know something about this.   
  
Speak of the Dread Wolf and he shall appear: a little saying Anders learned from Merrill, and one that came to mind when he saw the aforementioned grumpy elf darkening his door. He almost said “Little Wolf!” but bit it back in time. Diminutives are difficult for those who have been diminished. Anders saw the way he flinched around Danarius. Pet names would not work. He said, instead, “Oh. You.”   
  
Fenris stepped in. “Yes,” he said gruffly. “Me.” The collection of dockworkers and relatives fall silent. Then one of the Dalish stepped forward, and Fenris actually smiled.   
  
“Lethallin,” the Dalish woman said. “ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma'sula e'var vhenan.” She holds her arms open, but Fenris grasps her arm instead, a less intimate hug. Fenris looked pleased. Anders was surprised. He always spoke so dismissively of the Dalish.   
  
“You two know each other?” he said. He eyed them doubtfully. Thedas was always so much smaller than he thought: running into Isabela was a clear example. Fenris dropped the Dalish’s arm.   
  
“Yes,” he said gruffly. “The only acceptable mages, you two.”    
  
Anders laughed. “Acceptable, am I? Tell that to the Chantry.” The workers in the room tensed. Divine Justinia recently released writ declaring laborers’ associations a sin in the eyes of the Maker, because they were not turning to the priests of His Bride, who were supposed to settle disputes. The usual rage: Elthina refused to settle disputes, refused to hear anyone except the Hightown nobility, and her Chantry was almost always empty of actual worshippers.   
  
Fenris said, “Varric wants you at the party. Are you done here?”   
  
Anders looked at the crowd. His patient was safely in a healing sleep, and with the Dalish revealed to be a mage, he was feeling more comfortable leaving him. Still, Varric’s protection only afforded him safety, not any of the others, and while Aveline was doing her best to obfuscate in the guards--and had been promptly demoted twice--he was always worried they would rush the clinic when he was not there. The Dalish mage said, “I can take it from here. We’ll be leaving soon, and it’s best you don’t hear.”   
  
So much of his life was knowing when to close his eyes. Anders said, “Alright,” and followed Fenris out.   
  
The night was crisp and clean, and Anders shivers slightly, despite his cloak of feathers. He eyes Fenris, particularly his footwraps. He understands intellectually and practically of course that elves have different circulatory systems. Still, he thinks, wrapping his arms around himself, he should be cold. They walk in meditative silence towards Lowtown. The gangs leave them alone: Varric’s paid them off.   
  
“So,” he says. “Aren’t your toes cold?”   
  
“What?” Fenris leans in to hear him better. They’re walking rather close now. Anders knows it is for mutual protection, but he leans in anyway. “No. No. They’re not.”   
  
“Ah,” Anders says. They round a corner and head up a stairway, and pay off the guard keeping curfew to let them through. “So, you know that Dalish woman?”   
  
Fenris hesitates. “You don’t?”   
  
“I don’t even know her name.”   
  
“Then it’s probably safer that way. Other clans don’t have as many...problems as Sabrae, and like to help out their kin. Regardless of how disparate.”   
  
Anders marvels how Fenris’ Common is so elegant, despite the conditions in which he learned it. “Do you know why she’s here?”   
  
Fenris looks at him carefully, and, without moving his face, scans the periphery. No one is eavesdropping. “Her husband’s steward of the dockworkers’ association in Wycombe. They’ve made a commitment to helping the others in Kirkwall and Ostwick too.”   
  
Anders is stunned: first, that Fenris knows this and he doesn’t, and second, that they are about to walk into the Hanged Man and most of the people in there will happily sell this secret out to the Merchants’ Guild and get them all killed. His patients, his neighbors, his  _ people _ . “We can’t let Varric know,” he whispers. Varric will pay off the Carta and the Templars to protect him. That protection will abruptly cease if the dwarf, deshyr of the Merchants’ Guild, finds out he is protecting a rabble-rouser and a union drive. “But--what can I do to help?”   
  
Fenris looks up at him and smiles.


	6. hot apple cider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merrill spikes the cider at the Hanged Man.

Hot air blows them back as they open the door to the Hanged Man. Fenris rolls his eyes at Anders and steps through, and they are greeted with a drunken cheer by Hawke, who stumbled on their way over. Anders’ grin is suspicious, he knows it, and Hawke stops and cocks their head, before sharing a meaningful glance with Fenris. Fenris grimaces.  
  
“I brought him, as you ordered,” Fenris says. “Can I go?” Hawke reaches for him but he flinches away. They withdraw their hand.   
  
“No, you’ve got to try this cider Merrill made.” Before he can protest, Hawke produces two tankards and shoves them into both of their hands. They spot Merrill and Isabela cornering Sebastian by the bar, sigh, and head over to supervise. Anders stares into his tankard. It is one of the nicer ones, ceramic, and warm to the touch. He inhales: cinnamon, apples, cloves and nutmeg, a hint of orange and embrium. Kirkwall autumn in a cup: it is lovely, and the embrium makes it unpredictable.   
  
He holds it out towards Fenris and says, “Cheers.” Fenris, to his pleasant surprise, clinks mugs with him and he chugs it while Fenris merely sips.   
  
“To a successful drive,” Fenris says quietly. “Victori da spolia.” Anders looks around quickly, to check for eavesdroppers. He likes the scoundrels of the Hanged Man, he is one himself, but he does not want anyone selling out his patients. For once, Darktown seems to be organizing. If the dockworkers can pull off a strike during the pre-winter unloading rush--they would grab the entire net of the city’s finances and make them pay. The cider pools through his body, leaving him feeling decidedly cozy and rosy. Merrill’s a powerful mage, and the embrium was a nice touch. He feels like he is floating.   
  
“Victori da spolia,” Anders says dreamily. The embrium is hitting him hard. The room is beginning to glow a wonderful amber, but Fenris is a distinct turquoise sea. That elf has the most wonderful eyes, he thinks. Like seaglass, as translucent as lyrium-blue. He says quite seriously, “You have glass eyes.”   
  
Fenris takes his drink from him and walks away, leaving Anders feeling slightly bereft. There wasn’t much of the sea, or glass either, in the Anderfels: just the stone houses they cleaved from the cliffside, which felt just like the tombs their ancestors built. He drifts around the Hanged Man, still careful to keep a hand over his purse, and catches snippets of conversation. Merrill is innocently asking Sebastian question after question about the Chant, while Hawke snickers in the background. Isabela is attempting to teach a very drunk Aveline how to play Wicked Grace, and Varric looks annoyed, surrounded by dwarves. Anders floats over. It takes him a second to make sure he isn’t literally floating. Merrill put far too much embrium oil in the punch.   
  
“I don’t care what it looks like,” Varric is saying. “If we don’t get those ships unloaded and sailing by Harvestmere, Orzammar’s going to be right up my ass about the next tax payment. Pay off the foreman, get in a doctor, I don’t care. Just deal with it before they go to the Thieves’ Guild. I want the Carta kept out of it.” The dwarves leave. Varric scowls and rubs his forehead wearily. “Fuck this shit,” he mutters, and then he notices Anders drifting, and totally not eavesdropping.   
  
“Hello,” he says dreamily. He has heard quite a lot of information that he will of course not use for nefarious purposes, ever. His purposes cannot be nefarious. He’s possessed by a spirit of Justice, after all, and that makes it difficult to be nefarious.   
  
Varric says, “Merrill got to the cider, didn’t she.”   
  
Anders puts two thumbs up. He tells Varric he loves him and means him no harm and wanders off to find Fenris. Fenris is with Donnic, who has been a lot more fun since he and Aveline parted ways. They’re whispering suspiciously. Anders looms before them and says, “Suspicious.”   
  
Donnic stares, but Fenris sighs. “Merrill made the cider,” he explains.   
  
Donnic says, “Ah. You alright, mate?”   
  
“I am a spirit of Justice,” Anders informs him. “And Justice shall be done.” He is feeling quite pleased with himself, and enjoying himself thoroughly. In a flash of insight he understands Merrill’s sense of humor, finally. There’s nothing quite like saying bald truths with holy simplicity. If you pull it off, no one can get mad at you when they realize you’ve obliterated them emotionally and run circles around them intellectually. Unfortunately, Anders hasn’t been cute enough to succeed since he was twelve and ran away from the Circle for the first time. It got him halfway to the Anderfels, why did he give that up? Justice says, gently: you need this break, don’t think about that right now, and pushes that thought away. “I miss having a sense of humor,” he mourns.   
  
“Okay,” Donnic says. “Should we sober you up some, or leave you to it?” He looks at Fenris. “I have to go back on duty after this, can’t take him back to Darktown.”   
  
Fenris shakes his head. “He can’t go back to the clinic. Varric’ll want to send an escort.” Donnic almost asks a question, then visibly bites it back. Anders is impressed. He’s less of a meathead than he thought, still terrible at Wicked Grace, but not that dumb. “He can sleep it off at my place.”   
  
“I have _things_ to tell you,” Anders says. “Wonderful things. Important, not just about your eyes. But I have more to say about that too.” Donnic is laughing now, and Fenris looks bothered, a bit red-cheeked, and Anders hopes that isn’t just the rose-colored lens the embrium-spiked cider gave him. He hopes he made him blush. Donnic and Fenris bundle him out before he gets too silly, and the night is steadying without taking this glow from him quite yet. There’s been so little joy, since ever, he thinks. Since the Blight. Since the Circle. Since Father. Since I was born. He’s going to hang onto this yet.   
  
As they head up to Hightown, Anders puts his arms around both men, and Fenris doesn’t shove him away. He’s becoming easier with touch, since he killed Danarius, and less grumpy too. Something has eased in him, and it not just the drink. They stop at the top of the stairs and Anders grabs them both tightly. “Look,” he says, “look.” The moon is ripe, hanging over the city, and he can pick out his favorite constellations. He whistles up a wisp and asks it gently to show them what it sees, and it stretches before their eyes to make the constellation. It becomes Servani, the Chained Man, and then suddenly the constellation figure lifts its head and throws off its chains, facing them directly before dissipating. It’s beautiful. Anders says, “Thank you,” and the wisp fades.   
  
“Did the whole city see that,” Fenris says, voice suspiciously calm, “or did you only enchant us without our permission?”   
  
Anders freezes. He backs away from the both of them. “It--the wisp only gave that to us. It’s a blessing, I think. It was meant to be a gift.” The sense of closeness has faded so quickly he feels winded. Kirkwall’s nights have gotten cold, and Anders shivers. He knows he’s fucked up. Fenris’ eyes are looking less seaglass clear and more like flint, sharp enough to cut. Anders meets his gaze. “I’m sorry. I--it was trying to be sweet. It’s Kirkwall. The Veil’s thin here. The wisp must have seen us having a good time, wanted to wish us luck. I’m sorry.” He’s talking too much, he always does that when he’s nervous. Donnic coughs.   
  
“Right, well, that was weird,” he says amiably. “Let me drop you two off before the guard shakes you down and I have to pretend I called dibs, alright? Let’s go.”


	7. first frost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders sobers up.

Anders woke up shivering and feeling hungover. Someone had thrown his shawl over him and taken off his boots, and tucked a pillow under his head. Alas, the fireplace was unlit, and dusty besides. He winced and pulled himself into a sitting position. Hopefully he hadn’t embarrassed himself too badly the night before. Alcohol and embrium hit him harder since Justice had found a space. He thought, there was to be a spell to magic hangovers away. He felt the echo of smugness from Justice that meant that there was, and that Justice had no intention of teaching him. Mealy-mouthed and parched, Anders left the room and began to wander Danarius’s mansion. At least Fenris had finally disposed of the corpses.  
  
He found the elf stirring a pot of oats over the fireplace of the main hall. Fenris growled, “Mage.” Anders winced. He hadn’t thought the wisp was going to indulge all three of them, he had not intentionally invoked it, and he had gotten perhaps too comfortable with spirits since Justice tended to scare the demons away. Anders decided to play it safe.  
  
“Thanks for not killing me in my sleep, Mage-Killer,” he said. Fenris grunted. “I’m sure you considered it.” Fenris grunted again. Anders shivered again, and rubbed his hands. If Fenris were less unreasonable--that is not fair, Justice twinged at him, look at the lyrium-brands--if Fenris were less uncomfortable with casual magic, he’d spit a little fire into his hands to warm them up. He said, “Mind if I take a seat?” Before Fenris could tell him no, Anders grabbed a stool and sat next to him at the fireplace. He huddled in his shawl and inhaled deeply: nothing quite like gruel in the morning, after a good party. Was it a good party? He had a moment of grace, so that was good.  
  
Fenris stirred the pot, then added a dollop of honey, and then kept pouring. Anders watched with growing amusement as he emptied an entire jar into the pot, and then cinnamon.   
  
“Get that for me,” Fenris said, indicating with his chin. Anders turned around and found another jar sitting on the floor: sliced walnuts. He handed it to him. “If you want to be useful, you could slice a few apples. There’s a sack downstairs.”  
  
“Oh no, I much prefer being ornamental,” Anders responded. Fenris snorted, but kept stirring. Anders wandered down the grand staircase. He really was living like shit, squatting in his own home. He may have finally removed the corpses, but the mansion still stunk of death, and there were scorch marks everywhere from the party he had thrown in the beginning of the month. The Veil was particularly thin in the cellar. A thin scream stretched across the stone floor. Justice thought, I came too late.  
  
Anders blinked and he was holding a knife in one hand, an apple in the other. It was a good apple, solid, smooth, red. He hoped it would be good enough for the gruel. He headed upstairs and announced, “Your cellar’s haunted, you know.”  
  
Fenris said, “I live in a mansion formerly owned by a blood mage. Yes. I know.”  
  
Anders sliced the apples and added them to the pot. He was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. He’d had tenser breakfasts in the Circle, after one of the apprentices disappeared or an enchanter attacked. This felt a little too similar. He drew closer to the fire. The first frost was settling in, and Fenris’ mansion was freezing. When the apples softened, Fenris ladelled the gruel into two bowls, offering him one. They ate in silence, sitting on stools before a magnificent fireplace in a magnificent hall, that Fenris had turned into a kitchen. Anders kept trying to catch Fenris’ eye, but he wouldn’t look at him.  
  
“So,” he said into the chill. “You cleaned up the corpses.”  
  
Fenris grunted.  
  
He tried again, “The gruel’s good. Thanks for taking me home last night, embrium oil’s hit me harder since Justice moved in.”  
  
Fenris paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. He put it back in the bowl and set it aside. “‘Moved in.’ Like a bad roommate, who occasionally urges you to murder people.”  
  
“Well, it’s not like he pays rent, but he does give good advice sometimes,” Anders said. “It’s not all doom and gloom. Justice is very healing, you know. Transformative. Catharsis is not an inherently violent process.” He smirked. He was particularly proud of that line. The other Liberati in the Circle would parrot it back at the aequitarians, when they would accuse them all of being fear-mongering extremists. It is not violence if it’s self-defense: but tell your oppressor that. Anders sniffed.  
  
Fenris said, “You’re possessed by a demon who pays rent by giving you occasionally good advice. You’re worse than Merrill.”  
  
“Hey!” Anders was indignant. “Spirit, not demon. I’m not a blood mage. Merrill deals with demons. Justice is as unbroken as he can be, living in the waking world for so long. It’s hard but we’re _trying_.”  
  
Fenris pinched the bridge of his nose, irritated. “Both of you say there’s a difference in the work you do but I see no evidence to the contrary. That demon Merrill’s been _dealing_ with has her running manic around Kirkwall. You, you’ve been getting more reckless too. Letting the _trade unionists_ host _meetings_ in your clinic--what are you going to do when Varric finds out? Because he will find out. I told him I’d keep an eye on you, but how could you be so reckless?”  
  
“Wow, I didn’t know you cared so much,” Anders snapped back. “I’m not turning patients away. I can take care of Varric. I know how to be discreet.”   
  
Fenris lifted a single eyebrow. “You look like a molting bird in that shawl. You occasionally have long conversations with yourself. Your eyes glow.”  
  
“Your body glows!” Anders cast the bowl aside. “You’re squatting in a mansion in Hightown and regularly let Isabela start bonfires! You are the last person to call me--unsubtle.”  
  
Fenris let a short gust of wind out through his nostrils, like an annoyed horse. “I don’t mean--I do not want Varric to catch wind of the dockworkers’ strike. He has people watching you, for your own protection, but he will not risk losing face with the Carta by allowing the Merchants’ Guild to negotiate with them. And the Lavellan are known troublemakers. They don’t have her wanted poster up in Kirkwall, not yet at least, but I know the Carta--”  
  
“They’re planning a strike,” Anders said blankly. “You don’t mean they’ve already organized a union. They’ve _already_ organized? I thought yesterday was the first meeting!”  
  
Fenris looked abashed. “I should not have said that,” he said stiffly. “It is better you know as little as possible. This isn’t your fight, mage.”  
  
“It isn’t yours either, elf,” Anders said. “Half the men working the docks are shem. And Ferelden, too. So don’t give me that excuse. Mages don’t make shit but still have to work and sell for the Templars and the Chantry. The Tranquil do most of the enchanting topside and they’re just kept as mindless--”  
  
“Slaves,” Fenris said. “Yes. I’ve thought of the comparison.” Anders flushed. He never felt comfortable talking about Fenris’ past. Not only was it not his business, but the elf was so prickly, and he always felt he was blundering into saying exactly the wrong thing. The Circle was a kind of slavery: mages were not paid for their labor, but at least they were not chattel. They were not possessions, though of course they could always be possessed. “Fine. But I strongly advise you do not let them have _any_ conversation about _anything_ pertaining to the strike in your clinic. You need to steer clear of this. Varric’s sympathy only runs so far. I’ve told him I’d keep an eye on you, that I suspected Justice was gaining a stronger hold on you. So he no longer needs to send guards. But the less you know, the better.”  
  
Anders looked at him, hard. Who did he think he was? He ran the fucking Mage Underground--but of course he was not going to tell him that. Aveline was good at looking the other way on her rounds. Donnic was good about vacuously gossipping about templar drama, overheard in the Viscount’s Keep. But Fenris had no sympathy for any mage accused of blood magic, and little interest in hearing what may have driven them there. “Fine. But why do you know? How are you involved?”  
  
Fenris shrugged. “Elves talk. I don’t spend my entire time skulking up here, you know.” A smile played at the edges of Fenris’ lips. Anders had the sudden, irrational desire to trace the edges of his mouth: down, boy, he told himself. He kills mages. He’ll kill you if he thinks you’ll lose control. And these days, with so much injustice, how easy it would be, to let it wreck, to let the spirit take the streets and give them a show Kirkwall would never forget.  
  
In the cold Anders left and shivered in the first frost of the year, drawing the feathered shawl Mahariel had given him around his shoulders, and wished for the warmth of the hearth. He kept his head down as he walked through Hightown, eyes darting at shadows as the wind rustled the few manicured trees the aristocracy let grow in the public square. Lowtown was bustling as always, and as he passed by the entrance of the Alienage on his way down to Darktown, he noticed that Dalish woman at the gate, speaking to Merrill. When they noticed him they turned away, and he kept walking into the wind, into the gray autumn morning, wishing he had said something better, said something right, because the joy of last night seemed an entire age away.  
  
When he got to the clinic there was already a line: three sick babies, a retired miner with a chronic cough, a weaver with arthritis, and too many people who just needed to eat. He did not have enough hot food to last them through the day. He had so little left to give, to get through the first frost, and Justice said: there is more that you can do. Find a better way.


	8. frolic in the leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders heads to the Sundermount, to replenish the clinic's stores of elfroot and embrium. Fenris invites himself along.

Anders wakes up in a better mood. The weather is a bit warmer, and he gets up early enough to see light seeping over the cobble streets, and the air tastes less like soot and more like the old wood. Things are stirring: the last of the harvest, the quiet dead, and Justice, justice is back in the streets. Both of them are in a better mood, knowing what is happening at the docks, and he is ready for the influx of injuries, and he knows it is time to prepare.   
  
In the bright morning Anders resolves to gather elfroot and embrium and spindleweed from the Sundermount, and ambles to Hightown to talk Hawke into coming with him. As usual, Hawke has their mansion filled to keep from the echoing loneliness since Bethany was kidnapped, since Leandra was murdered. Dog barks excitedly at him and Anders smiles slightly at the scene: Merrill and Sandal sliding down the banister while Orana worries in the corner and Bodahn laughs, and he can hear Isabela’s boisterous laugh from the study. He dodges Merrill and Sandal as they frolic and finds the rest of his friends laughing, except for Fenris.   
  
Varric is saying, “And then he declared, dick right out, ‘FELICITATE ME!’” Fenris grimaces, trying to hide a laugh, as the others chortle. “You should’ve seen Sebastian’s face...oh, hey Blondie, been a bit. You good after all that embrium last week?”   
  
Anders is a bit embarrassed. He steals a look at Fenris, who catches his eye and starts slightly. “It was fine. No rampages this time.”   
  
“Yeah,” Varric says. An awkward lull falls between them. Anders settles next to Fenris, who tenses. Embarrassed, he draws away. At first he had been offended by Fenris’s hostility, but Justice told him to be gentle. Justice is compassionate, after all, more than he ever was, before he met him. Sometimes he wishes he could be less so. He misses being able to indulge in self-righteousness. Varric coughs slightly. “Anyway, I have to go, there’s this mess…” He waves a hand. “I don’t even want to talk about it. But the Merchants’ Guild awaits. See you later, Hawke.” He heads out.   
  
In the silence, Anders says, “So. I need to head to the Coast--I’m running low on supplies. I was wondering if you’d all like to come with.”   
  
“Meh,” Isabela says. “Trees. And you’re not even doing anything  _ fun _ with the elfroot. I’ll pass.”   
  
Fenris regards him. “I’ll go.” Anders is annoyed at first, because Fenris always thinks him incapable of self-moderation, of keeping his mouth shut, of keeping himself leashed. It is impossible to keep Justice silent. He should know that. But when Isabela leaves, Fenris relaxes slightly.   
  
He murmurs, “Preparing?” He’s smiling slightly. Anders shifts closer, to hear him better.   
  
“You can never have too much elfroot,” he says, to prove to him that he can be discreet. Fenris rolls his eyes at him and they walk downstairs to collect Hawke and Merrill, who are taking turns trying to jump onto the chandelier, and they hire horses to ride out of Kirkwall’s urban sprawl to the Sundermount, and only a few people try to steal them, too. Poor Hawke, Anders thinks, hanging out with apostates and elves, they’ve never going to be left alone. He steals a look at them as they ride into the woods. Hawke is laughing as Merrill whirls the leaves about them in a wonderful dance of light. He wonders if they know what is coming, what side they would take. If Fenris knows, Merrill has to, and if Merrill is involved, then Hawke is probably preaching beheading the bosses behind closed doors.   
  
They dismount. Merrill summons a spirit to watch over their houses, to Fenris’ disgust, and they pair up. Merrill giggles and grabs Hawke’s arm and tugs them in the direction of a particularly promising pile of leaves, squealing about frolicking. They have left him and Fenris alone. Anders wonders if it is deliberate, but no, of course not.   
  
“Well,” Fenris says impatiently, “shall we?”   
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.” They head into the woods and begin gathering elfroot. The woods taste hungry, like the promise of a good meal, and the air is so clear Anders almost chokes on it, he has become so used to the soot of the Foundry. It flashes through him that it isn’t right, that Kirkwall is so dirty, that it could still be like this. They say the elves lived cleanly with the woods: maybe that’s what Merrill means when she talks about frolicking. No, Justice says, it’s fucking, but close enough. Anders blinks, halfway through trimming a shoot of royal elfroot, and wonders: do spirits fuck? What? They work in companionable silence. Fenris is humming under his breath. He has a nice voice.   
  
Anders says, “I’ve always liked foraging. I love Kirkwall, but I’ve missed this part of being on the run. When you know you’re not being watched.”   
  
Fenris grunts.   
  
Anders continues, “So--I’m preparing for the worst, but I don’t think Varric’s going to let anyone actually kill the workers. Or even seriously maim. Unless I’m overestimating his pull in the Merchants’ Guild, but hey, he’s kept both of us alive. Do you think he’ll do the right thing?”   
  
Fenris says testily, “I think he’ll do what he thinks will make him comfortable. And being cruel makes Varric uncomfortable. But he doesn’t like to be challenged.” Anders finishes harvesting that particular patch of elfroot, and moves to a growth of embrium, close enough to Fenris that he can feel the heat radiating off his skin. Fenris doesn’t shift as he crouches next to him, but nudges him gently. “I know how you get on that,” he says. “Just take what you need, for the others. Don’t want you ripping open the Veil again.”    
  
Anders puts down his knife and stares at him incredulously. “Is that what you think that was? You really think I’m a demon, don’t you?” He laughs, but only because he’s angry. “Do you know what it takes to rip open the Veil? Do you--”   
  
“Yes,” Fenris says simply. He sits back on his haunches and meets his gaze. “I was owned by a magister. I know what it takes to tear the Veil.” The woods around them are still and gold, beautiful for once, and Fenris sticks out sharply with his blue brands and white hair.   
  
Anders shakes his head. “Then you should know I can’t do that. I  _ won’t _ do that. I’m not a fool like Merrill. I don’t go fucking around with demons. Justice isn’t--”   
  
“Then what was that  _ thing _ at Varric’s party?” Fenris is getting annoyed. “It took us over! Even Donnec! I couldn’t see the streets, the sound changed--”   
  
“That was a wisp!” Anders shouted. Fenris scowls. “It was just a wisp. Like a memory. It was drawn to us because the Veil’s so thin in Kirkwall, especially around this time of year, that all time may as well be eternal and we’re half in the Fade anyway. It was trying to show us something from the Kirkwall slave rebellion, Fenris. That’s what it was doing with the lightshow. It was showing the constellation Servani breaking free.”   
  
Fenris is silent. “I thought you summoned it.”   
  
Anders says flatly, “I try to keep spirits as far from this world as possible. They don’t deserve it. It’s corrupting. I can barely keep Justice whole, I wouldn’t do that to a wisp. They’re like children. And I wouldn’t--the Fade is scary enough, for a mage. I wouldn’t bring non-mages anywhere close to it, not without asking first.”   
  
Fenris says, “Ah.” He reaches for his knife and begins cutting the embrium. He is harvesting more than Anders needs. He supposes this will be the closest he’ll get to an apology. Anders huffs and kicks his way through the fallen leaves to the other side of the clearing, where more elfroot awaits. Fenris doesn’t begin humming again, and Anders is bothered and annoyed and embarrassed. He would never risk one of his friends like that, not even Fenris--but when did Fenris become a friend? 


	9. howling wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negotiations break down, and the guards are tasked to break the strike. Anders cleans up the mess.

The Veil in Kirkwall is paper-thin. The wind howls and it shifts. An angry thought can thin the weave, and Justice is always angry. Anders struggles in the week up to the strike, hating the suspense as negotiations start and fall apart and begin again. Fenris keeps inviting him to the Hanged Man, ostensibly to keep an eye on him, and he is a rare beacon of sanity and reality. Anders struggles in the Hanged Man, watching Aveline and Varric in their complacency, and he struggles visiting Hawke in their mansion. Everywhere he goes he sees everyone besides them struggle: child pickpockets fingering threadbare pockets, Carta thugs shaking down already shuttered shops, and the cold. The wind howls and Anders feels himself screaming with it. It is all far too much. At least Fenris sees it too.  
  
Only preparing poultices keeps him grounded. As that mid-autumnal gloom settles on Kirkwall, Anders grinds a new wear into his mortar and pestle and chops new scars into his favorite cutting board. He had brought them both from Amaranthine--gifts from the Hero of Ferelden, who still paid his warden pension. He has processed so much elfroot he stinks of it, and on his way back from the bar, he gets stopped by a guard who thinks he’s cutting it with lyrium dust. Luckily he manages to keep his cool through the indignity of it.   
  
“I’m a _healer_ . I run a _clinic_ ,” he tells the guard testily. She is one of the newer, Kirkwall-born recruits. Aveline does not like her, but Aveline hates everyone in the guards, even as she thinks she can reform it. “I’ve treated your brother for gonorrhea. Leave me alone.” The guard lets him go after that, but still, the anger burns. He wants the right to walk through this city unmolested. Lyrium addicts should be left alone, too--most of them are former templars Meredith threw out anyway, and it is so typical of this city and this chantry that they refuse to even clean up their own waste. Anders is left cleaning them up, literally sometimes--withdrawal is a mess, but it is only right to help, it is only justice. Burning with disgust, Anders wonders when Elthina will finally step into this muck, rather than quietly letting the guards “legislate” against it. When will justice come to Kirkwall? Spirits press against the Veil at that thought, and he winces as the whispering rises almost to a shout.

“Soon,” Anders mutters. “Soon.”   
  
The day the negotiations break down is gray but clear. Anders comes down to the docks to watch the speeches. The first one to go is a elvhen man, the same who visited his clinic, with a pronounced Orlesian accent. He stresses the righteousness of their cause, and the international nature of it. From the sheep-shearers of the Ferelden highlands to the weavers of Wycombe, to the tailors of Val Royeux, Kirkwall is a vital nexus for them all. Kirkwall facilitates the flow of cash through the whole of northern Thedas, so it is only right that they do not get killed for it, hurried along to pack and unpack ships. It is only right and fair that they earn their money’s worth.   
  
The next few speeches are less eloquent but rile up the crowd. Anders finds himself smiling, slouching in the shadows with his medic’s kit. These speeches have been said before, from the slaves’ rebellion and before, he knows so sharply that it is Justice who has watched this: and they will be said again, before my time is done. He blinks and rubs his head, unsure of whose thought that was, unsure of what that meant. Had Justice wanted to return to Kirkwall? Is that why he is here? How much of his life is at the mercy of these forces he thought were under his control?   
  
A Ferelden dockworker is leading the crowd in a rousing chorus of “Andraste’s Rebellion.” Anders tenses: they have included the verse about Shartan. He scans the crowd anxiously, looking for guards, and as the wind howl he notices Varric looking disgusted, at the other end of the embarkment. The dwarf is easily to spot, he is the only bit of bright color amongst the lot. When Varric leaves, Anders realizes: oh, it’s about to get bad.   
  
The guards come in, with clubs rather than swords. There are two for every protesters, and the speaker falls silent as the crowd turns. People begin clutching at each other. Others brace themselves. The mood is grim. Anders reaches for a knife, just in case.   
  
A high clear voice cuts over the murmuring crowd, the sloshing and creaking of the waves against the docks. “You have been given orders from the Viscount’s Office to disperse, else you will each be charged with vagrancy and suffered to surrender a week without pay. You have two minutes to disperse and return to your posts.”   
  
“Fuck that!” someone yells from the crowd. People begin booing. A hand touches his shoulder, and Anders whirls around to bat it away, but is restrained. Fenris stares back steadily, wrapped in a dark cloak, hood up. The lyrium branded on his skin glows softly.   
  
Fenris says hoarsely, “It is time to prepare. I will make sure you can do your duty.”   
  
“What?” he whispers back. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”   
  
Fenris looks grim. “There are templars about, so yes--you do. There are enchantments on one of those ships that the Knight-Commander wants. Be ready.”   
  
The wind howls as the guard charges the crowd, and Anders dodges blows and returns a few of them as the strikers scream as blood flows yet again on the streets of Kirkwall. Fenris tackles a guard who has left off his club and is just punching a man, and Anders flinches at his battered face. He checks his pulse: still there, thank the Maker.   
  
“We need to get him to the clinic,” he says. “So many of them. They need magic. More than this.” Then he feels it more than hears it: rage, hot and sudden cutting through the chilly day. A woman is screaming. It is that Dalish woman.   
  
Fenris says, “Fuck.” He rushes over and Anders follows, weaving through the melee. The people, somehow, are gaining ground, but of course most of them fought the Blight. You don’t survive the Blight, fending off slavers and bandits, and at least five years in Kirkwall just to let a guard beat the shit out of you. You don’t survive just to let the Merchants’ Guild cheat you out of your money. You don’t survive just to die. Fenris backhands a guard and Anders kicks him in the crotch to make sure he stays down--a trick he learned from escaping the Circle. He almost slips on a puddle, and then sees--that was blood. He understands why the woman was screaming. She is bent over the man, pressing on a gaping wound. A guard stares at her own hands, holding a blood-slickered sword. Justice pushes through Anders’ shock and then the sword is in his own hands. It is raining now.   
  
Fenris is yelling, “Get him to the clinic, you fucking fool!” Anders drops the sword and they begin the difficult process of carrying the wounded through Darktown. They have inflicted enough damage that the guards have retreated, but Anders wonders if this was enough. The Dalish woman is steady as she and Fenris carry the man, even as she is doused with his own blood. She notices Anders looking and grimaces.   
  
“Not the first time,” she says haltingly. “Not the last.”   
  
What sort of fucking life you live, Anders almost says, and then he realizes: the same as his. He looks down at his hands and sees them covered in drying blood. He scratches at them as they enter the clinic. Lirene greets them, already stressed.   
  
“We’ve got half the Ferelden population in here,” she says. The clinic reeks of blood and piss and shit. Fear does that to a person. “Work your magic, mage.” So he begins, setting Fenris at the door to vett people as they come in. The last thing he needs is a Carta bomb going off as he treats all these head wounds. The Dalish woman helps, her magic flaring and heating up the room so much Lirene has to bank the fire. It is exhausting work. He stumbles into the back at some point, to get the lyrium potions, but to his disappointment the lock on the chest has been broken. Whoever broke into it left a turnip and two vials, and he and the Dalish mage split them. Lirene takes the turnip.   
  
Most of the strikers are in stable condition, and he expects almost all of them to recover within the next few days. Magic is meant to serve man, and how wondrously it does. The Dalish man pulls through after six blood replenishing potions, and Anders worries, because that is his entire stock, and tomorrow will find him entirely unprepared. That one trip to the Sundermount was not enough.   
  
Only one person dies: a woman from the alienage, one of the first elves to work with the Fereldens at the docks. The elves do not let him touch the body. Merrill comes with the hahren and wraps her in a beautifully-embroidered green shroud. He watches as they load her onto a cart drawn by the two of the last halla in Kirkwall, and a long procession follows them back to the alienage. Exhausted, he leans against Fenris as they stand at the entrance of the clinic. Fenris, cautiously, puts his arm around him.   
  
“She’s with the ancestors now,” he says. “Or the Maker. Whatever she believed.”   
  
Anders shifts. “Did you know her?”   
  
“A little. It doesn’t matter.” Fenris turns and pushes him gently back into the clinic. “You should rest. You’re no use to us like this.” Anders wavers on his feet. There is so much to do and Justice is urging him on. He is afraid of what will happen if he blacks out and Justice takes it upon himself to do what must be done.   
  
“Right,” he says. “Rest. That sounds nice. What a concept. Love to try that sometimes.”   
  
“Mage,” Fenris growls, “get yourself in a bath before I have to scrub the blood and shit off you.”   
  
He really shouldn’t be turned on by that, but he is, and he laughs, and takes a bath, and falls asleep. When he wakes up he has been dressed and tucked into his own lonely bed.


	10. falling for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're starting to figure it out.

Anders wakes up to the sound of someone shuffling at the threshold. Carelessly he lights a candle with a finger of magic and squints. Fenris looks tentative. The wind is wild outside, Anders can hear it rattling the glass of the window. He sits up in bed.   
  
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is that Dalish alright? Your friend said--” He swings his legs to the floor but Fenris puts his hand up. Softly he closes the door behind him and moves closer. Gingerly he sits on the edge of the bed. Anders wishes he was wearing underthings, but he always tries to wear as little in possible in bed, after those years of being buttoned up in the Circle.   
  
“He’s fine,” Fenris says. He clears his throat. Anders waits expectantly, but Fenris says nothing. They sit in silence as the wind howls outside.   
  
“Wild weather outside,” Anders comments. “Think it’s going to rain?”   
  
Fenris grunts. Anders is perplexed. The mage-hating elf is sitting on the edge of his bed in the dim candlelight, fit to drawn. If Anders could, he would do it in charcoal and white chalk for the lyrium. He is a beautiful man. He admires the lean, sinuous curve of his back, and fantasizes about tracing his fingers down his spine. But Fenris is Fenris and Anders is Anders: he’d probably rip his arm off, if he tried.   
  
“Aren’t you cold?” Anders says.   
  
“Elves have different circulatory systems,” Fenris says boredly. This is a refrain Anders has heard often, from both him and Merrill. He flushes, feeling foolish. He knows this, he’s a healer. He knows this. “But...yes, I am a bit cold. Autumns in Kirkwall.”   
  
“Not quite Seheron,” Anders says, hoping he hasn’t gone too far.   
  
Fenris chuckles and his heart flips. “No.” Fenris inches closer. “I confess I can’t sleep. I thought you might still be up.”   
  
“You’re the one who put me to bed,” Anders said, amused. “Said I wasn’t useful awake.” He leans in closer. “So, now what? You want me to make myself useful?”   
  
Fenris says, “I haven’t seen blood run like that since Seheron. Since before I ran away. There was a strong peasants’ movement, before Tevinter made them all plantations. It reminds me of the first protests, before they brought in the laetans. The mages acted as enforcers. They didn’t trust anyone else.”   
  
Anders does not know what to say. Fenris always seems to expect an apology from him. This, though, feels like a confession, but he is definitely not a Chantry brother. He was always the one going on confessing, too, to Hawke or to Varric or Ser Pounce. He feels defensive, and, crossing his arms, draws away.    
  
“I’m not like that. I wouldn’t do that,” he says. “Not the mages I know.”   
  
Fenris lits up with anger, then masters it. “How do you know that?” he snaps. “You killed a  _ guard _ , Anders. Granted, I would have killed her too. But what makes you so different from those laetans I saw?”   
  
“Because I’m on the other side,” Anders says, “with you. Prisoner, not imprisoner.” That sounded better in his head. Fenris gives him a skeptical look. Anders sighs. They always seem to talk past each other. He can never get it right. “I’m sorry.”   
  
Fenris says, “Well, you should be.”   
  
“For existing? For being a mage?”   
  
“For being a fool. At least you killed her with a sword. I didn’t know you knew how to wield one.”   
  
“I don’t. It must’ve been Justice,” he says. “I--blacked out. I was also--disturbed.” Anders is ashamed, too afraid to look at him directly, soft in the firelight. He looks at him under his lashes, and sees him impassive as always. When Anders meets the Maker, He will wear an expression like Fenris: faintly disgusted, faintly amused, giving ground to neither. He reaches for him, places his hand on top of his. Pleadingly, he says, “I’m not a monster. Fenris, you know this, you have to--”   
  
Fenris says suddenly, “I do not know how you can stand it. I cannot. It’s awful. You remind me of myself, when I was in Seheron. At the mercy of my master’s passion. How can you stand to let it  _ enslave _ you? All you do is  _ speechify _ about the necessity of mages freeing themselves from their chains--but you’ve loaded them around your neck.  _ How could you _ ?”   
  
Anders wants to cry. He hasn’t cried since he got that letter from Oghren, saying Ser Pounce died. He blinks rapidly, moving his hand off Fenris’s, and wipes at his tears. Disappointment was not what he was expecting: blame, yes, that’s par for the course with Fenris. He can feel him staring at him stonily, and Anders draws in breath and gulps.   
  
He entered this pact with Justice willingly. Justice chose him, as much as Kirkwall chose him. There was no other viable path. It would not have been right to let the spirit shatter. There is so little justice in Thedas. There is none in Kirkwall, as yesterday showed. All he wanted to do was a little bit of good, and he knows he has. He has the clinic. He saved that man’s life. He even takes care of the stray cats, as Messere Pounce-the-Second can demonstrate. But nothing he can do is ever enough. Blood still stains Kirkwall’s cobbles, and the rain cannot wash it away. At least this time only one person is dead, two people, the elf-woman from the alienage and the guard whose brother had gonorrhea. He barks a laugh that turns into a sniff, and he covers his eyes. Justice is breaking him, justice is wrecking through.   
  
“It’s not that,” he chokes. “It isn’t. I couldn’t just leave him there. It’s not a curse like Merrill.” He forces himself to face Fenris, flushed. Hot tears keep seeping at the edges of his eyes. He hasn’t been this shaken up since Amaranthine, but that was the last time he had seen so many people scream. “You’re Andrastian, aren’t you? They’re the Maker’s first children, Fenris. They only break because of the corruption of  _ our _ world, because  _ we _ forced the Maker to turn away. Keeping him whole--there’s no justice in this world, have you noticed? No justice in Kirkwall. Aveline got demoted when she arrested Kelder, and let’s not even touch that Qunari mess. This is all we’ve got.” He points to himself, his heart. “I’m holding him, for as long as I can. And doing my part. That’s all I can do. It was  _ my choice _ . I’m not his thrall. How can you say that?”   
  
Fenris is hiding behind his hair, inscrutable as Anders cries. Anders tries to restrain it, but then he leans into it. Fenris invited himself in, he can deal with it, he’s the one who brought up Seheron and being helpless and being a slave. Gingerly, Fenris puts his arm around him, and Anders scoffs.   
  
“You don’t have to do that.” He is warm. Elves always are, as long as they’re eating enough, a physiological difference between humans. He and Sigrun used to snuggle up to Velanna, who played being irritated at his cold feet and her cold hands, but liked it. She missed her clan. Anders sniffs. When was the last time someone held him? Karl, maybe, Karl who he could not save, Karl for whom Justice had come too late--and in that fucking Chantry, too. Rage and grief seizes Anders and he bends over, trying to keep it in. At least Hawke had killed him. He couldn’t do it, he didn’t want to. He weeps, and Fenris holds him closer.    
  
“Sorry,” Anders croaks. “Lyrium exhaustion. Been a long life.”   
  
Fenris says quietly, “I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”   
  
He makes a face. “I don’t mind you disturbing me. I mind it when you’re--mean.”   
  
“I am mean,” Fenris smiles, and Anders is annoyed that he has a beautiful smile. “You can’t say you’re a paragon of compassion either, mage.”   
  
“Oh, shut it, elf.” Anders leans back, enjoying the half-embrace. He has cried himself out, like he hasn’t since Ser Pounce died. He didn’t cry when Karl died, just threw himself into his work for the Mage Underground, and now he realizes that wasn’t right. This is a tribute to him, he thinks distantly, or perhaps that is Justice bleeding through: he would want me to feel. He takes a shuddering breath and wipes his eyes. “Sorry. Maker. That was the worst I’ve cried since my cat died.”   
  
“Your orange one?” Fenris asks. “The one you fed a whole pumpkin to? I thought that one was fine. So Merrill said.” Anders is briefly charmed by the notion of Merrill updating Fenris over the status of his cat over whatever the two of them get up to, meeting in the alienage.   
  
“No, that’s  _ Messere _ Pounce-the-Second. My cat, the first cat,” he says grandly, “was Ser Pouce-A-Lot. The finest cat to ever be press-ganged into the Grey Wardens. Scratched out a hurlock alpha’s eyes--and  _ lived _ !”   
  
Fenris is amused. “How did he die?”   
  
Anders sighs. “Age. With Mahariel, in Amaranthine. She let me know.” They look at each other. They are both exhausted, physically and emotionally, and Fenris still has not let go. Anders raises a hand gently, almost touches his face, but cowards out and lets it land on his shoulder instead. “Thank you. Thank you for asking.” It is right to be gracious, and that is Justice being smug, why is Justice feeling so smug? “It’s nice that you--care, I suppose.”   
  
“Right,” Fenris says. “You’re the healer. You do good work, for a mage.” Anders tenses and Fenris winces. “Considering that you are so restricted by the templars, you have done all you can. And I respect that. I admire it. I cannot say I have prioritized others in my own search for my liberation, as you have. For so long, I was focused only on Danarius--and now that he is dead, it is as if…” He trails off.   
  
“The world’s opened up,” Anders says. “It was like that when I left the Wardens.” He caresses his shoulder, enjoying the sinew underneath. Emotions run high after every action.   
  
Fenris eyes him but does not tell him to stop. “Those Dalish at the docks--they’re of Clan Lavellan. Imladris and Mahanon. Good people, even though Imladris is even more vicious with her fire spells than Bethany. They helped me escape Seheron. They matter to me.” Anders looks at him, uncomprehending. “I am trying to say--vishante kaffas, you know this is my third language? Thank you for taking care of them. And their people. Our people.”   
  
Anders shrugs. “They’re my people, too, Fenris. You’re my,” he stops. This is all too fragile to call it friendship. He also wants to fuck him too much for it to be easy. He settles for a word the Liberati in the Circle used: “comrade.”   
  
“Comrade,” Fenris snorts. “We’re comrades. Thank you for clarifying that.”   
  
Anders, who once got caught fucking an enchanter on the altar of Hossberg’s Circle and kept going with just a grin to cover him, blushes. He begins to stammer a response only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. The two look up. Lirene stands at the threshold, angry.   
  
“That deshyr friend of yours is here,” she says, “along with that Dalish girl. You need to get them out before they call the guards on us.” Anders’ heart sinks: Varric, in the same room as the leaders of the strike. He gets up quickly, and Fenris follows. What else can go wrong? Anders thinks. I called him my  _ comrade _ , for fuck’s sake, what was I thinking? How could I get so distracted? What else can go wrong?


	11. hay ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes a lot of arguing, but Anders realizes he needs to get out of Kirkwall as quickly as possible. Fenris volunteers to come with.

The elf has the blade of her staff right at Varric’s throat. Varric, of course, has his finger on Bianca’s trigger. Merrill looks absolutely despairing. Lavellan is staring at her, not the dwarf, and she does not look pleased. Her lip curls into a sneer, and the temperature rises uncomfortably hot for such a cool evening. Anders shifts. She must be a fire mage.   
  
“Varric,” Fenris warns, “put your crossbow down.”   
  
“Her first,” Varric says, not moving an inch. Merrill begins backing towards the door. “You good, Daisy?”   
  
“Oh, Merrill is always fine,” Lavellan sneers. “Clan Sabrae’s runaway First always comes away her hands clean, doesn’t she? Tell me, child, does the alienage hahren know you consort with the likes of him?” She jerks her chin at Varric. “She let you do the burial. You’ve dishonored the dead.”   
  
“I didn’t tell anyone  _ anything _ ,” Merrill protests. “Stop patronizing me! I’m barely younger than you, Imladris Ashallin. You have no right--”   
  
“I have every right,” Imladris snaps, “Marethari is dead because of you! And you’ve wiggled your way into the Kirkwall alienage. You should face the consequences of your disgrace.”   
  
Anders raises his hands. He is beginning to sense he is losing track of the plot. First Fenris in his bed, well, sitting on his bed, then the grief and mess of Kirkwall and surviving, and he’s killed a guard, at least he did it with a sword, and now even more mess: it has been a long fucking night. Before he can open his mouth, though, Varric snorts.   
  
“Don’t you elves ever play nice?” he says. “I’m not here for your man. Not yet, anyway. The Merchants’ Guild doesn’t know his name. Yet. Put your weapon down.”   
  
The Dalish woman twists the grip of her staff, and Anders has had enough. He steps in. “This is a clinic,” he snaps. Justice is pushing behind his eyes, and lending his voice a reverberation. “No fighting. Both of you, calm down. I’m not having more bloodshed today, I’ve had enough.”   
  
Varric sighs. “Bad choice in friends, Blondie.” He lowers Bianca and steps back. Lavellan shifts her stance, but Anders can feel her twisting at the ambient magic in the room. Merrill is staring at from the other end of the room. His patients are beginning to stir. It isn’t right, they’ve been through enough, and he’s not having whatever Merrill’s made wreck through his shop.   
  
“I don’t even know who these people are,” Anders lies. He knows that they are agitators from Clan Lavellan from Wycombe, that they are Fenris’ friends, that, for the moment, they are his too--comrades, more than Varric is. “You know more than me.” Maybe Varric will volunteer information. He is feeling very clever. Varric eyes him: less clever than he thinks. He tries to deflect, a classic strategy he would employ in the Circle. It was always fun to mess with the aequitarians and the traditionalists; maybe that was why they all hated him. “Maybe Merrill can help.”   
  
“Yes,” Fenris says darkly. “Perhaps she can shed some light on the matter.” He is angry, vibrating with tension, and Anders leans into his heat. The elf has not reached for his sword once.   
  
“I didn’t sell you out,” Merrill snaps. “I never did. Just because I don’t want to get involved in your--machineering, doesn’t make me a traitor. I serve the People in my own way. And Marethari’s death was  _ not _ my fault. The demon had taken her. It didn’t take me.”   
  
Anders is irritated. Merrill had woken the demon from the Sundermount, she had brokered the deal, and she had exposed her entire clan to its influence, and everyone knew the elves were more susceptible to the temptations of the Fade--though that is what the Circle taught, and really the elvhen mages passed the Harrowing as often as the human mages, so perhaps that wasn’t fair, even though they didn’t have the training to understand demons as Andraste taught, breaking down into the seven sins, but then again Audacity was beyond that, and old, old as Arlathan itself, and--he blinked. Justice said, pay attention. Dirthara ma, lethallin, suledin.   
  
Fenris let loose a huff of air through his nose, like an angry horse. “We don’t have time for this. Varric, why are you here? What did you say about the Guild?”   
  
Varric said, “When this is all over, you and I need to have a long talk about how you treat your friends. Especially when your friends disagree. If Hawke can deal with you and Blondie and Sebastian and Merrill and Aveline--really, take a page from Hawke’s book. They manage to get everyone to get along. You can try, you know. Communicate. Talk to me, Broody. And not just at poker night.”   
  
Fenris says, “Varric--don’t prevaricate. You came here for a reason. What is it?” Motion distracts Anders from their conversation. The Lavellan woman is inching closer to her husband. She wakes him gently, and there is a softness in her gaze that wrenches at his heart. He tastes envy, metallic on his tongue, as the man wakes up and reaches a weak hand to stroke her face. She clutches it to her, and he thinks, no one’s ever looked at me like that. Anders looks at Fenris and bites his lip nervously. There is nothing to expect. It would be wrong to expect anything, in times like these.   
  
“You four killed a guard,” Varric says. “And, listen. I don’t care about the guards. I’m happy to keep them off my back. And half the time they’re more trouble than they’re worth. But you chose exactly the  _ worst _ time to kill one, and the Merchants’ Guild is talking about justice for the family.” Anders snorts. “Well, she was supporting a family.”   
  
“Supporting them by extorting local residents and beating strikers to death, but okay,” Anders says.   
  
Varric glares at him. “ _ Moving on _ , the Merchants’ Guild promised justice to the family. Easiest and least controversial way to kill the agitators. No one likes a guard-killer, makes you all look bad.”   
  
“Except, of course, it’s okay when the guards are letting the magistrate’s son kill little kids,” Anders says, “or kill mages rather than send them to the templars. Or sell people to the Blind Men. Guard-killers, that’s what makes us look bad. Right.”   
  
Varric says, “I’m trying to give you a warning, alright? Get out of town. Ran into Daisy on my way here--apparently she’s heard similar. Someone in the alienage sold the Lavellans out, said they were here. So you guys need to get out of town for awhile. Especially you, Blondie. Smart that you killed her with a sword, but there’s only so many blond Fereldens running around Darktown. I’ve arranged you a way out.”   
  
Anders said wildly, “What about my patients? What about the strikers?” He saw Lavellan looking at them, supporting her man as he tried to climb out of bed. He was nowhere near well enough to be on his feet yet, not with the bash he got to the head. Anders hurried over and took his other arm, and settled him in a chair. What had Fenris said his name was? Mahanon. Perhaps it was better he didn’t remember. He stared at Varric. “What about them? I won’t abandon my patient, Varric. That’s got to be a ticket out for three.”   
  
“Four,” Fenris said. Varric raised an eyebrow. “I’m coming with you.”   
  
Anders blushes slightly. He wants him to come, of course he does, because Fenris is reliable in a fight. He knows these two elves. He knows the Free Marches better than him, too, since he had spent a few years in hiding before settling in Kirkwall. He doesn’t want to leave his clinic, though. He doesn’t want to abandon the Mage Underground, his friends locked in the Gallows. Meredith is planning something evil, she always is, and justice must return to Kirkwall, he cannot flee--   
  
Lavellan says, “Stop.” She looks at the dwarf. “What will happen to the dockworkers?”   
  
Varric passes a hand through his hair. “The less I talk to you, the better,” he says. “I don’t want to remember you. I don’t want to know you. And you don’t want to know--well, we’ll reach some sort of settlement. Those ships need to move. And dead workers can’t load ships.”   
  
“How long do I need to be gone?” Anders says, heart sinking. This is where he belongs. This is where the work must be done. Bethany is expecting him to shepherd two apprentices through the sewers and hand them off to Samson, who will escort them to Rivain. Samson liked mages, and used to pass along messages for Karl before his friend was tranquilized, and would do anything for enough lyrium.   
  
“Give me a month to clean things up,” Varric says. “But you need to be gone before dawn.” He gestures to the door. “A farmer’s taking hay as far as the Sundermount. From there, you’re on your own. But you better act fast--before someone robs him of his horse.”   
  
Anders gestures at Merrill to follow him as he hurries into his bedroom, packing quickly. He stashes his few favorite things--the shawl Mahariel made him, his journal, his cracked phylactery, and that small embroidered pillow his mother sewed him, a lifetime ago. Hurriedly he informs her rapidfire about Messere Pounce-the-Second’s peculiar diet, what Bethany needs for the drop, and how to handle Samson when he’s in withdrawal. “You’re involved now,” he says. “Congratulations. No more excuses for complacency apparently, according to Lavellan.”   
  
“Imladris Ashallin is just like you,” Merrill says angrily. “Both of you expect everyone to throw away all their life’s work and dreams and passion for some abstract dream of justice. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean I can. Or that I want to. I serve the People in my own way--mages too, you know. Not everyone can do what you do.”   
  
“But you’ll do it,” Anders presses. “For Bethany, if not for me. Meredith’ll have them made Tranquil--and they’re children, Merrill. Do you want more blood on your hands? You’re complicit in this, we all are. We apostates have an obligation to those who are stuck in the Circle. What do you think they’d do to you, if they caught you? Wouldn’t you want someone on the outside, working to get you out?”   
  
Merrill makes a face. “I’ll do it for Messere Pounce,” she says. “Don’t tell Hawke. Please. They don’t--I don’t know what they’d do, if they knew how bad things were in the Gallows.”   
  
Anders grabs his bag. “Just remember--two scoops of the pumpkin, and make sure he doesn’t get into the cheese, it makes him sick. And he’s allergic to sardines!” Outside, in the cold predawn light, is a horse and cart. The cart is loaded with bales of hay. He looks at it distastefully. He can already feel himself itching. They make a space for the four of them to curl up together, and then cover them again with hay. When he moves to sneeze, Fenris pinches his nose and he chokes on a giggle. Imladris has Mahanon’s head resting in her arms, and she scratches a cooling sigil into the wooden floor of the cart.    
  
It only makes it marginally better as the driver sets off. They jostle uncomfortably against each other as they drive into the sunset. It is not the most uncomfortable way Anders has escaped a city, but it is definitely the itchiest. He tries to say something to Fenris, an apology or a jeer, but Fenris just leaves his hand resting at his jaw and presses against him. That too is uncomfortable. The cart rattles on a particularly rough part of cobblestone, and Fenris snakes a hand around his waist to keep himself from being thrown against the cart. Anders leans against him with bated breath. It is suffocating in the cart, and he is afraid. Mahanon’s breathing is not as even as it should be. Fenris has also obviously eaten something garlicky the night before. He tries not to think too much about proximity. Instead, he worries about Merrill, and the mages, and his cat. He decides he will think about his cat, because that’s better than thinking about the alternative.   
  
An eternity passes as Anders listens to the rattle and jostle of cart over cobble transition to the paved road leading towards Ostwick. Then they are all nearly thrown out as it takes a sharp left and begins to escalate: the driver must be taking them in the Sundermount. He focuses on his breathing, on the mana thrumming in the people around him and the landscape unfolding him, and sinks into the wonder of it. The Dalish mage is all tightly controlled heat, like a planned burn on a field. She reminds him of a story Mahariel told him, about the Burning Man she met in the Fade at Kinloch Hold. Her husband, Mahanon, is less vibrant of course--he isn’t a mage--but all living things except dwarves exude some mana. When he closes his eyes he can see Fenris tattooed to the back of him. Danarius’s magic moves around his body, in those lyrium brands. Horrible, horrible, he thinks: Danarius should’ve died worse, we let Fenris go too easy on him.   
  
Finally the cart stops. They all tense. Fenris’ hand moves from his waist to his short sword, and Anders concentrates to bring a quick mana blast. If he hits whoever’s inspecting them hard enough they’ll be stunned enough for the rest to run for it.   
  
Then a Ferelden-accented voice says, “Easy, mages. Just give me a bit to unload this. You’re in friendly hands now.” They push the bales off and blink into a beautifully clear autumn morning. Anders recognizes the small homestead they are parked at--friends of Hawke through Athenril. He breathes in that wonderfully sharp, woodsy air as they lurch out of the cart. He turns to help Imladris get Mahanon out, but Fenris is already half-carrying him. Anders hurries over, hands glowing. Mahanon gives him a weak smile and pushes him away.   
  
“Well,” the Ferelden smuggler says, “that’s you sorted. Dwarf says I don’t get paid ‘til you come home safe, so--farm’s yours for the month. But you’ll work for your keep. I need extra if there are templars involved.”   
  
The farmhouse is cute and clean, surprisingly prosperous for a Ferelden’s homestead--but of course Varric is paying him to hide whomever. He wonders if this is where Varrics disappear sometimes. Isabela has a theory Varric has a lover, probably named Bianca, and Merrill thinks it’s forbidden love, that she is a human noble or an Orlesian bard or something exciting. Anders really does not care. They settle Mahanon into a bed, and Anders changes his bandages. The cuts have scabbed over, but his ribs are still purpled and he cannot move particularly well. He leaves his patient to the tender care of his wife, and then collapses into the plush armchair by the fireplace. Fenris follows, and Anders reaches for him, exhausted. Fenris takes his hand and squeezes it. He meets their gaze and Anders sees an naked vulnerability there as exhaustion forces him to drop his usual guarded expression. For once Anders holds his tongue. Anders squeezes his hand back, and Fenris pulls away, and as he falls asleep he feels a blanket being draped around him. When he wakes up he finds his shawl tucked around him and his boots off: Fenris, and what has he done to deserve this sort of tenderness?


	12. ripe for the harvest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders catches a glimpse of revolutionary domesticity.

**  
** Anders likes working in the orchard best. He has never kept a garden or been near a cow, not since he was a child, so he sticks to what he knows: picking and stealing fruit. He sings to himself as he works, plucking apples and dropping them in baskets, a Liberati song they used to drunkenly screech back in the Circle.   
  
“Enchanters!” he cheers. “The time has come to be alive!” He pauses and considers a beautifully dappled reddish apple with green streaks. The lyrics were not very good, but Karl was very drunk when he wrote them. He keeps on singing, shaking down the tree. He is worried about the people has left behind, he is worried about his clinic, he is worried that Merrill will overfeed Messere Pounce-the-Second, but under the applerich sun, in the perfect coolness, he cannot work himself up. Every revolutionary needs to rest, else they would burn themselves out--and when he does, he wants to go out brightly, so everyone can see, not with a whimper, like so many mages before him. He wants to go down fighting. He crows, “Enchanters remind that time will not remind! The dragon’s crooked spine will never straighten into line!” A shadow falls over his basket and he turns around. Fenris is smirking at him.   
  
“Did you really rhyme ‘alive’ and ‘remind’?” Fenris asks.   
  
Anders quips, “They don’t teach poetry in the Circle. We did the best we could.”   
  
Fenris rolls his eyes. “We had better songs in Tevinter.” He picks up an apple and turns it around, fastidiously looking for defects. Anders can’t help but smile. He is incredibly fussy about his food. “And none of us studied poetry at our master’s knee, I can tell you that.”   
  
“Right,” Anders says. “I figured Tevinter schooling was mostly cackling and blood magic anyway.” He stifles a laugh as Fenris polishes the apple with the edge of his sleeve. He is out of his armor for once. That farmer of Varric’s brought them all a change of clothes. Fenris looks resplendent in a red tunic and brown leather leggings, feet wrapped in leather bands. Anders understands intellectually that elves have a very different circulatory system than he does and don’t feel the cold as intensely as he does, but still, he wonders if his feet are cold. He shuffles his new boots. Last time Varric sent him clothes, he gave them away, partly because he felt guilty having new things when the old did fine, and partly because he knew someone would just try to rob him in Lowtown. He stretches, enjoying the feel of his new linen shirt. He catches Fenris eying at him. The elf looks away. Maker preserve me, Anders prays. Give me patience because it’ll all be Blighted if I say something first.   
  
Fenris picks up one of the baskets and they head back to the farmhouse. He brushes against Fenris as they walk and grins when Fenris does not shift away. When they get to the kitchen, Mahanon Lavellan is cooking up dinner, singing much more beautifully than Anders could ever mention.    
  
“Life ain’t worth living, without the one you love,” Mahanon croons, “fare thee well, my honey, fare thee well!” He looks up from the pot and grins. “Oh, if you peel and core them for me, I’ll talk Immo into making a pie, if she’s not so tired from the hunt.” Anders has his suspicions as to why Imladris has been slowing down, but it is not his place to share them, particularly not to her husband.   
  
“First Lavellan’s still out then?” Fenris asks. “I told her it was unwise to hunt by herself.”   
  
Mahanon gestures at Anders to pass him a small box on the table. He hands it to him. “I doubt even a dragon could take her down. I’ve seen her and her brother take down a dragon before. She’ll be fine.”   
  
“And you didn’t join in?” Anders asks, amused despite himself.    
  
“No, I’m not crazy like she is.” Mahanon opens the box and begins sprinkling salt flakes into the stew. “And it was a very small dragon.” The door opens and the woman herself walks in, carrying a brace of rabbits. “Ah, speak of the Dread Wolf and he shall appear. Or Andruil.”   
  
“Don’t invoke her,” Imladris scolds. “I think we have more of a fighting chance with Fen’Harel than Andruil.” She drops the rabbits on the table and wraps her arms around him. Anders feels wistful. She is the only mage he has ever met in a happy relationship. It is not easy to support a person when they are constantly on the run, though he supposes that the Dalish do it differently. He glances at Fenris, who looks away again: damn it. Fenris picks up an apple.   
  
“How do you bake a pie?” Fenris asks. Anders leans against him casually. His excuse is that the kitchen is small. Fenris, still, does not pull away, and he even moves a bit closer. He is warm, and Anders resists the urge to pull him in close. Arms touching is good enough, Fenris is trickier than a stray cat, and he has met enough people who flinch that way in the Circle to know to move slowly.   
  
“The filling’s easy,” Anders says. “The pastry is the hard part.”   
  
“You baked pies in the Circle,” Fenris states flatly.   
  
“Everyone needs a hobby.”   
  
Fenris snorts. “I can just see Knight-Commander Meredith patrolling the ovens for demons of Pride and Wrath. Demonic sigils written into the pie crust.”   
  
“That’s what lattice-work is,” Anders says very seriously. “Invocations to our demon overlords.” They set to their tasks. Mahanon lets the stew simmer and sits down. He is recuperating well, though his ribs still aren’t in the best of shape and Anders is worried about his susceptibility to pneumonia, and the Dalish are planning to move on before Varric returns. They don’t particularly like him, which is fair. What’s good for Varric’s business is bad for their livelihood. Varris tries, of course, to be a good man, to balance having a moral compass and being a deshyr of the Merchants’ Guild. He’s heard him drunkenly confess he does not want to become his parents. Anders thinks, well, make your choice. He did, even before he met Justice: liberation above comfort, always. Fenris starts cutting the apples. He had been half-joking about baking pies, but now he has to. Imladris says she’ll wash up before they start making the pastry dough, and gestures behind her husband’s back at him to follow. Anders wipes his hands on his pants. He thinks he knows what she wants. She has been very tired lately.   
  
In the other room, Anders says, “So you’ve been slowing down the past couple weeks. Eating more. How’ve your dreams been?”   
  
Imladris looks at the wall, beyond his face. He supposes she is a little embarrassed. “You have many elvhen patients, don’t you.”   
  
Anders shrugs. “I am properly trained, you know. Was a healer in the Circle. My master was an elf, and she made sure I knew what to look out for. Any nausea?”   
  
“I don’t get nauseous,” she says, crossing her arms. “Not the last time, at least. But yes. I can never eat enough, sleep enough--and more wisps have been following me around in the Fade. Can you test it?”   
  
Anders warms his hands first and gestures at her to lie down. He can check if she’s pregnant without asking her to strip, though he can get a more accurate sense of how long the fetus has been gestating. He asks if he can touch her and she nods. Carefully he checks, and the magic responds. He closes his eyes and focuses, if he can get the shape of the ambient magic in the fetus he can approximate how many weeks gone she is--and there, that’s about what he would expect for the end of the first trimester, isn’t it. Carefully he ends the spell. Sometimes activating the fetus’ ambient magic risks it, but he has learned from the best, and Justice is good at guiding his hand.   
  
“I think you’re about thirteen weeks,” he says. “So the tiredness should end soon, but let me know if the dreams get worse and I can set up wards in your room. Are you planning on keeping it?”   
  
Imladris puts her hand carefully on her stomach. “I shouldn’t have been able--my cycle doesn’t start for another year, I thought.”   
  
Elves live longer and so reproduce less than humans, Anders knows. The average elf has a fertility cycle of about ten years. Big families are uncommon. However, there are some studies that suggest that the thinner the Veil, the easier it is to conceive, and plenty of elvhen mothers have told him that the more they dream, the stronger and healthier the baby will be.    
  
“Kirkwall fucks things up,” Anders says. “No one’s actually properly documented it, but women in the alienage have been having children every three years or so since the Blight. The Veil’s basically porous here, after all.”   
  
“Shame the city is filled with child murderers and slavers,” Imladris says. “There are plenty of Dalish who want more children, but it’s not worth the risk.” She sighs. “Thank you. I have a lot to think about.” Anders understands he has been dismissed and leaves her alone. He can hear singing in the kitchen--Mahanon’s dulcet tones and Fenris’ more raspy voice. He pauses at the doorway to enjoy the scene. They’re singing in Elvhen as they cut and core the apples, and it is funny hearing their accents (Orlesian and Tevene respectively) blend into something older. Merrill told him once the People are born with the rhythm of Elvhenan on their tongue. At the time Anders thought she was being needlessly mystical. But watching them, he gets it, he gets the sense of time. They are all part of rhythm older than their bones, bled into this very earth, and sometimes the melody stays.   
  
Fenris notices him at the door and drops his knife, flustered. Mahanon keeps singing. Anders slides over to the table and sits next to Fenris. Rather cautiously, heart pounding, he arranges his arm over the back of Fenris’ chair and pops an apple slice into his mouth. Fenris leans back like a cat and glares at him.   
  
“You need to work on the pastry,” he says.   
  
“Right,” Anders responds. “What were you singing, anyway? It was pretty.”   
  
“Pretty,” Fenris repeats. “An ancient elvhen work song, and you call it pretty. How...descriptive.”   
  
Anders says, “Sorry, I write manifestos, not poetry.” He gets up and starts making the pie crust, beating together ingredients and carefully folding pastry. He wants to make sure this is good. They all have something to celebrate now: him and Fenris, being alive, and for Mahanon and Imladris, being alive. The kitchen smells wonderful. It is all so wonderfully domestic. Anders has always enjoyed his peripatetic life, though he wishes it were more his own choice. Now he’s starting to understand what all the fuss is about, and why Hawke is so obsessed with making their mansion feel like a home. It is nice to come home from work and make dinner with people who do not want to kill you. As he rolls out the pastry dough, he imagines Fenris doing what Imladris did, and wrapping his arms around, grinding into him from behind. Of course Fenris is right behind him, glowering at a pile of apple peels. Mahanon leaves to check on Imladris. Anders whistles to himself, badly. He does not care.   
  
Fenris, though, is irritated. Fenris is perpetually irritated. At first it was annoying, now it was getting cute. He says, “What are you trying to do?”   
  
Anders stops mid-whistle. “Making you a pie. Why?”   
  
“Not that. The whistling. What are you trying to whistle?”   
  
“‘Andraste’s Mabari.’ Wasn’t it obvious?”   
  
There is an incredulous silence. Anders carefully draps the pie crust over the pie tin and begins whistling the chorus. Fenris says, “No.”   
  
Anders waves at him to bring over the filling. Fenris hovers as he shakes the spread into the pie. He nearly drops the bowl with the filling, nervous with him so close. Luckily, Fenris catches it, and they look at each other, and Anders bites his lip and sets the bowl onto the counter. Fenris takes one step closer and touches his face.   
  
“You’ve got crumbs here,” he murmurs.   
  
Anders leans in and kisses him softly. When he breaks away Fenris still has his eyes closed. He waits nervously, wondering if he has overstepped, if he should apologize, but then Fenris opens his eyes and growls, “Mage.” It is embarrassing how hard that makes him, he’s aching, and Fenris advances on him and wrenches him down and kisses him hungrily, the man  _ bites _ . Fenris’s nails are digging into the back of his necks, he hopes he leaves marks, he runs his hands down Fenris’ back and cups his ass, and Fenris shivers. When they break from the kiss Fenris’s eyes are glazed, and Anders is panting.   
  
“Fuck,” Anders says, and kisses him again. It has been so long, and Isabela doesn’t count. He breaks away and tells him very seriously, “Let me suck your dick. Please.”   
  
Fenris’ eyes widen slightly and he smirks. He leans against the counter and says, “Well, I won’t make you beg.” Anders begins to crouch, but suddenly Fenris panics and says, “Wait.” He puts his hands on his shoulders. Anders can feel his hands trembling. He feels ashamed. He knew better, he should have moved a bit slower. It didn’t help that he was a mage.   
  
Anders rises.“Are you alright?” he asks. Fenris isn’t letting him go. “I--the last thing I want to do is push you too fast.”   
  
“I’m fine,” Fenris says crisply.   
  
“You’re not,” Anders says. He removes his hands. He asks, “Can I touch you? Can I hold you?”   
  
Fenris nods, and he takes him into his arms. He is awash with all emotion, ever, as Fenris shakes: fear, worry, tenderness, anger. He deserved better. This should have been easy. Mutual desire should be easy. They deserve better than this. Anders says, “I’m sorry.” He holds him in silence, and waits for him to be able to speak. At one point Imladris enters the kitchen, pauses, takes in the scene, and turns heel. They are not going to finish this pie tonight.   
  
Fenris says rustily, “It has been a very long time since I have been touched like that.”   
  
“Ah,” Anders says. He does not know what to say. He knows how to fix physical wounds, not emotional, and Fenris is always bleeding. He does not know how to staunch this kind of wound. Justice intervenes: he pulled at a scar. Let him stretch it.   
  
Fenris says, “I can remember the last time I was touched like that. I couldn’t, before.” He shows him his arms, and Anders admires them, and then realizes Fenris is showing him his tattoos. “What Danarius did took my memory. It--this is--”   
  
“A lot,” Anders supplies.   
  
Fenris narrows his eyes at him, but Anders is not joking. “Yes.” He is no longer shaking, but he is not letting go.   
  
Anders says, “Tell me what you’d like me to do and I will only do that. I--you matter to me. I’d burn down the world rather than hurt you.”   
  
“You’d burn down the world anyway,” Fenris says, amused, “and by accident. Because you sneezed fire and lit a haystack on fire, causing a wildfire during a summer drought.”   
  
Anders laughs, shocked. “Well, that haystack had it coming.” He smiles at him, elated. He is so remarkable. He is so caustic, so brutal sometimes, but witty and poetic and utterly beautiful, lean muscle playing under his hands, and so carefully controlled. He is smitten. He feels like he has been lit by holy fire. He wants to tell him that he loves him, though that would be insane, so instead he kisses him again, gentler this time, and he knows suddenly that Fenris feels the same, he feels this exact same wild riot. He knows he feels the same.


	13. crisp autumn air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders and Fenris prepare to return to Kirkwall, and whatever comes next.

Merrill sends a letter with Varric’s messenger. Messere Pounce-the-Second is fine, the two apprentices made it out okay, Samsom drank all the lyrium he left in the clinic, and no one has died yet. Varric has paid the guards off, the bosses off, and reached a compromise with the strikers. Only two people have died, and only a couple have been maimed for life. The dockworkers have won their demands. Those injured will be paid their pensions. The messenger also brings two fine Free Marches Rangers, for them to ride into town. Varric’s got a foot in the horseflesh market now. They are free advertising to his munificence.   
  
The Dalish left the house without saying goodbye, and took half the kitchen implements and a apple sapling with them. Fenris says it wasn’t personal. Imladris has never been good at goodbyes, and Mahanon has always been a magpie. Anders is slightly offended, and irritated besides. It is hard to make dinner when Mahanon took all the best pans, and he thought they would have at least tried to recruit him.   
  
“No,” Fenris says. “You’re doing good work in Kirkwall. For now.”   
  
“Not enough,” Anders says.   
  
“We’ll be home soon.” Fenris takes a bite from the one loaf of bread the Dalish left them. They’ll be able to subsist the day’s journey back to Kirkwall on apples, but still: they could have left some of the dried pork. Anders smiles at him uncertainly and reaches for his hand. He crept into his bed last night and they fell asleep together, that was it, and that was fine. Iit is fine, but he worries. Whatever is growing between them is still so fragile, and Anders worries that his luck will run out. Mages don’t get to fall in love and have a domestic routine. The whole situation is revolutionary, and he does not want Kirkwall to steal it from him.   
  
“Merrill says my cat is fine,” Anders says instead. “And she didn’t burn down the clinic, and no one’s run her out of town with pitchfork.”   
  
“Yet,” Fenris says. Anders snorts, and Fenris takes his hand in both of his. The tenderness sits between them. He’s happy. He does not want to leave, not yet, but he must. He always has to, he always has to move on. Fear wracks him and he draws back. This was all a moment of weakness. Fenris won’t want to take back up with him when they return home. The reality of their situation is too clear. He hates mages, or at least disdains mages, and hates mages who deal with demons. Justice isn’t a demon though Anders fears that he’ll make a demon out of him, but Merrill always says that it’s less about the Andrastian binary of good and evil and more about sacrifice. He isn’t like Merrill though. He believes in good. Anders looks at Fenris, ashamed. Does he know that? That he believes in good?   
  
Fenris looks askance. “Is something the matter?” He reaches for his hand again, and Anders closes his eyes. He likes the calluses of his hands   
  
“Are you comfortable?” Anders rushes.   
  
“Am I what?”   
  
“Comfortable,” Anders says, “with this. Continuing when we return to Kirkwall. With taking up with your local abomination. I thought you hated Justice. He isn’t going away. He’s a part of me. Magic is who I am. As much as the fight for  _ freedom _ is. And I--I’m not like Merrill, I don’t condone blood magic, and I don’t go looking for spirits to pester. But this is what I am. I’m a mage. And if you’re not comfortable with this, it isn’t right for either of us to play at domesticity and pretend as if we’re not mutually opposed. Because we’re not. I don’t want to live in a world where the Imperium exists, and I’m going to change it.”   
  
Fenris takes that quietly. He brushes his thumb over Anders’ hand, a gesture so gentle it brings him to the brink of tears. He has lived his life on the edge of a precipice, from the Harrowing to his fugitive years, from the Wardens to Kirkwall, and now the wind is at his back and threatening to push him over. Anders almost says, say something. Please. Even if it’s you being an ass. I’ll take that over the silence. It’s unbearable, and he gets up and walks to the door. He wraps himself in Mahariel’s shawl. Hand on the door handle, Anders does not let himself look back.   
  
Outside the air is crisp and the constellations over the apple trees are bright. Anders walks to the orchard and lies down, arms crossed over his head, and watches the stars careen overhead. They were brighter at Weisshaupt. He really ought to have looked for his mother when Mahariel took him there. He sighs: but you can’t go home again. Everything is so fleeting, every bit of happiness. He wonders what it would be like to return home and hear his name called again. Perhaps his mother is dead: then his name is too, then. At least that is something the Chantry had not taken from him. He has kept it entirely to himself.   
  
Beyond the sky is the Brethren of the Air. That melancholy is Justice’s, Anders recognizes. The world is not as it should be. It can be righted. He can do it. He will do it. Not all mages are like the magisterium, and the magisterium will not last. Anders closes his eyes, brings his hands to his face, and sighs. He is not Danarius. He is not Merrill. He has not succumbed to temptation. He has kept Justice whole, even though there is no justice in the streets of Kirkwall--no. Merrill wrote that the dockworkers won. For once, something right, and he was part of that. He has healed the hurt and killed the killers. What does that make him? Right, for once, no matter what Fenris thinks.   
  
He opens his eyes and start. Fenris is staring down at him, eyes and tattoos glowing in the dark.    
  
“Maker’s breath, man!” Anders yelps. He scrambles upright, back against the tree. Fenris squats next to him. He moves as silently as a wraith, and glows blue like one too. Anders has always liked shiny things. Gloomily he thinks, maybe that’s why I like him.   
  
“Yes,” Fenris says.   
  
“What?” Anders has no idea what he is referring too. The night is cold, and he shivers and clutches the shawl closer around him. He likes the clothes Varric gave him but he misses his robes.   
  
“Yes,” Fenris says. “I am comfortable. With this. With a mage.” He pauses, and amends himself. “With a mage such as you.”   
  
Anders is silent. His brain has shorted out. He gnaws at his lip as Fenris slides next to him. He rests his head on his shoulder. “You know my life is for the mages’ freedom. For breaking the Circle. For liberation.”   
  
“As mine is to break the yoke of Tevinter slavery, yes.” Fenris kisses his head, and Anders blossoms at the touch. “As you said. These aren’t mutually opposed. I want you to know that I admire how you fight. For your people. For our friends. For people you barely know. Though I must admit that I am frightened of Justice and the power you wield. It is hard for me. But my sister is a mage. I remember...I need you to understand. This--I need time. I need this to be slow. I do not know what will happen to us in Kirkwall, but I am not used to...intimacy. With a mage or not. And I am not sure--I had another name, once. And I am trying to learn what that meant to me. I cannot give you everything. I need some time for myself.”   
  
Anders looks up at him. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Fenris. Are you saying you want me or not? I’m not asking you to marry me. Maker knows that’s illegal anyway.” He cannot help the anger creeping into his voice. It should not be illegal for mages to set up households. He should not have to look at what Mahanon and Imladris have and envy. It should be his right. He pulls himself up. The night is sweet and heavy with the smell of apples. There are a few more they have to pick in the morning, before they return to Kirkwall. “I will never pressure you into anything you don’t want.” He is insulted now. He has been as gentle as he can. He wants him, of course he does, but he is not a monster. He would never force someone to deal with him if they did not want to. He has had enough unwanted advances in his life, he would never do that. Fenris should know that. He should trust him that far, at least. He is not a monster.   
Fenris blinks. “No! I do want you.” Even in the darkness he can see him blushing. “I want this. This intimacy. But I need to take this slowly. I have known you a long time, Anders. I would like this to last.”   
  
Anders leans in to kiss him. Fenris runs his fingers through his hair. It is unthinkable that he has this tenderness. He is sitting under an apple tree, kissing a beautiful man, in a crisp autumn night as the stars blaze overhead and revolution broils in the streets of Kirkwall. In the Circle he never dared dream of this. Even in the Wardens he could not see this kind of peace, letting a crotchety elf from Tevinter make him tender. He undulates against him. He feels like he is melting. He has always fallen in love too easily.   
  
They break from the kiss and Anders rests his head against him. He says sadly, “I’m not sure how much time we’ll have. Things are getting worse in Kirkwall. And Varric can’t pay off the guards forever. If Meredith calls for the Right of Annulment, I’m going to burn that city down, Fenris. Cullen wants to make us all Tranquil. I won’t let them. I’ll bathe the city in blood if I have to, but I’m not going to let them fucking kill me and get away with it. Rip out my brain and sell me back to the Chantry. Do you understand? The Tranquil you see, selling trinkets for the Chanters’ Board, those are my friends. Were my friends. I can’t let that happen again.” Anger tears at him again. Karl deserved better. Karl deserved freedom. Karl deserved this sort of love, nuzzling under an apple orchard.   
  
Fenris says, “Do you think I will let them? Let alone my feelings for you--I know what they do to the Tranquil. I’ve seen Samson begging in the street. I know how the Blind Men get their wares. I know how many Tranquil pass through their hands.” He looks at him squarely, and Anders forces himself to meet the intensity of his gaze. “I did not escape Tevinter to stand idly by in the wake of such injustice. Magic is dangerous. We agree on that. But imprisoning people for life? Ripping families apart? Destroying people’s minds? No. Tevinter has chattel, Orlais has serfs, but in the Free Marches, you have the refugees and the Tranquil. I know a slave when I see one.”   
  
Maker he’s gorgeous, righteous in the pale moonlight. Anders swallows. “If you talk like that, I’ll fall in love with you,” he tells him.   
  
Fenris laughs. “Come to the community meetings in the alienage. My speeches are nothing compared to the hahren. And you never heard Mahanon speak. He could talk the dead into marching again.” He had not been able to hear the elf speak--Anders was too busy worrying to properly enjoy the action, before everything went to hell. He smiles wryly. He has always hated rallies. He can never hear the speakers, and staying so long in one place gave the guards time to prepare. He misses the sizzling fights with the other liberati from the Circle so much his heart clenches. He kisses Fenris: not alone for now, not alone right now at least. This tenderness exists.   
  
Anders says, “Have you ever read my manifesto? We’re going to try distributing it next month--it was supposed to be this month, but then, well, we had to leave town.” Fenris stills as Anders’s hands creep into his hair. The man’s even tense in his scalp. He strokes him gently. He can get him to unwind.   
  
“Mm,” Fenris manages. “Read it to me. When we get back.” When they get back: Kirkwall is sitting glittering down the mountain, hugging the bay, surrounded by those statues of tortured slaves. It’s horrible. There is so much work to be done. He needs to finalize edits, he needs to coordinate with the printer, he needs to find the liaison to that elf publication called Fen’Harel’s Teeth, someone called Slow Arrow wrote him and said they would publish a copy. Anxiety stirs up his heart beat. The Carta doesn’t like them trying to circumvent their printers, and there’s only one Carta clan who isn’t charging a legion’s worth of enchanted helmets, and they’re at war with the Thieves’ Guild right now. It can never be easy. No one can ever get alone. He should know. He’s the most obstinate out of all of them.   
  
“Can I stay with you tonight?” he asks. “I’m getting cold.”   
  
Fenris’ expression is almost unreadable in the moonlight. The wind stirs the applewood. The harvest is ending soon. Anders wishes he were a painter, to commit this to something more immortal than his memory, that he could enchant the smell of the woods and Fenris’ own earthier scent, the sound of the wind and his heart, and the crisp cold cutting away doubt. Justice says, a bit doubtfully, there is a way, but you wouldn’t be very good at it. Stick to your words. Justice is very judgemental. He snorts.   
  
Fenris says gingerly, “Are you talking to yourself?”   
  
“Justice thinks I would be a terrible painter,” Anders says, shaking his head. He detaches himself from him and pulls himself up. He offers Fenris a hand. Fenris takes it. Anders smiles and smooths Fenris’ hair, tucking a strand behind his ear. “He says I should use my words to tell you how beautiful you are. The way your eyes shine in the light, the set of your jaw…”   
  
Fenris says drily, “You certainly aren’t a poet. Try again.”   
  
They walk back to the house hand-in-hand, setting into bed. Fenris reads a little by candlelight as Anders combs his hair, frowning at the page. It is the first time they have decided to stay in the same bed together, rather than Anders just slipping in when it gets too cold. Anders hopes it is not the last. He cocoons himself in the blankets as Fenris traces the lines at the end of the page. Fenris looks down at him and snorts.   
  
“I’m cold,” Anders says petulantly. He thinks, you could warm me up. Fenris closes the book and snuffs the candle. He tugs at his blankets, so Anders loosens the wrap to let Fenris pull him in. Eventually they fall asleep, and Anders is smiling when he wakes up to Fenris looking at him wondrously. The tenderness in his eyes is so raw it hurts.


	14. you take my breath away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders and Fenris come home.

Leaves litter the streets of Kirkwall when they return. Fenris takes the horses to Hightown with him. They dawdle at first, at the gate down to Lowtown. Anders is afraid for him to leave. Over nearly a decade their relationship has shifted from mutual antipathy to grudging respect and now comradeship and this tender thing, and it is all so fragile he fears a chill wind will ruin it.   
  
He asks, anxious, “When will I see you next?” Anything could happen while he is gone. The guards could come from him. The templars might invade the clinic. The Carta could firebomb it. Merrill could sacrifice him to Xebenkeck. She had wanted to talk to it, when Hawke accidentally summoned it.   
  
Fenris says, “Tomorrow?” Anders’ face falls. He wanted him to say “tonight.” He nods and begins to descend the stairs, but Fenris stops him. They kiss quickly, conscious that they are a sight: a Ferelden human and a Tevene elf, with two very fine horses. They break apart before someone can try to pick their pockets. Fenris says, firmly this time, “Tomorrow.”   
  
Anders trudges down to Lowtown, winding his way through the Foundry District and down into Darktown. The city goes from gold, trees resplendent in the crown of autumn, to dying and dirty too quickly. The old quarry walls block too much of the sun. He keeps his head down and eyes quick. No one seems to be watching him. The new clothes help.   
  
Messere-Pounce-the-Second runs out to greet him, meowing excitedly. He’s visibly thinner--Merrill has actually kept him to his diet. Anders scoops him up and the cat rubs against his face. He’s purring.   
  
“I should leave more often,” Anders tells him, hugging him close as Messere Pounce tucks his head under his chin and presses his cold nose to his neck. Cat in his arms, he walks into the clinic and is shocked. Merrill has whitewashed the place. She has little pots of elfroot and embrium arranged artistically through the front room. He hears a crash and a scream from the back room and sighs. He puts down Messere Pounce and goes to investigate.   
  
Merrill is holding aloft a bottle of something green, lying prone on a heap of sacks. Anders sniffs the air: elfroot, and a lot of it. Truly a ridiculous amount, really. Even Merrill couldn’t smoke all that. He heaves his bag down. Merrill opens her eyes and grins sheepishly.   
  
“Absinthe?” she inquires.   
  
“Now?”   
  
“Later!” she clarifies. “I made it myself. Isabela showed me how. I took a sack of sugar from one of Varric’s friends,” doubtless without permission, “and, well, in Rivain they drink it with rain water, but I didn’t think the water in Kirkwall would be ah, non-toxic enough. So I drew a bottle of water from the Viscount’s well.” Anders looks at her in disbelief. He resents how Hightown has the cleanest water while polluting the rest of the city. He resents that, because of the way the city itself is built, Hightown’s rainwater pours through the dirty gutters of Lowtown and floods Darktown. Every time it rains, he has to prepare for a cholera outbreak from the overflowing sewers. Every summer he prepares for malaria. Even he would not dare steal from the Viscount’s well, at least not just to make a drink. He would rather occupy it. He shakes his head and offers her a hand. She takes it, and he heaves her up.   
  
“Thanks for whitewashing the place,” he says. “What did I miss?”   
  
Athenril brought the elfroot for saving Mahanon’s life, apparently Imladris was a cousin, Hawke had left a bag of flaming dogshit on Varric’s doorstep, Isabela had received a very flirtatious letter from Fenris’ estranged sister, and Meredith had made three mages with connections to the underground Tranquil. Orsino had sent a letter to the Seekers. The spirits were getting restless--the very oldest ones, the ones who remembered the fall of Arlathan. The Veil was fraying. Six children in the alienage were showing signs of mana sensitivity, but Clan Sabrae was refusing to take anyone in until they had a new Keeper, First, and Second.   
  
“But,” Merrill says, “the halla came back. As soon as they buried Marethari. So I’ve heard. So Athenril told Hawke.”    
  
Anders pauses. Merrill fucked up, and he has no sympathy for what she did to her clan. She should have known better to make a deal with a spirit named Audacity, and one that was so obviously a Pride demon. He does pity her, perhaps, watching the convoluted ways her clan goes about ostracizing her but still makes sure she knows that they are thriving as much as they can without her. He decides not to touch it.   
  
“Makes sense,” he says. “They have no one to train them.” Merrill flinches, and he feels a twinge of guilt. It’s like kicking a puppy, but how else will she learn?   
  
“I suppose another clan will take them,” Merrill says, blinking rapidly. “Oh dear. I was never much of a teacher anyway. I should have asked Imladris Ashallin--but she can get so nasty.”   
  
“She was nice enough to me,” Anders shrugs. “Mostly ignored me, to be honest. Spent a lot of time in the woods. Her husband was a lot of fun, though.”   
  
“Ah, Mahanon, he’s the heart and soul,” Merrill smiles. “Good singer, too. Both of them are so intense though, no wonder you all got along. How was it with Fenris? When Hawke found out you were both gone, they were furious. They wanted to go with you. Varric had to talk them down out of tracking you down. Said they’d do more good telling Bran to leave the investigation off than going on the run.”   
  
He smiles. Messere-Pounce-the-Second bats at his face with a paw and purrs insistently. He wants to be fed. Anders thinks about Fenris, the hungry kiss in the kitchen, the cool night in the orchard, and waking up to him throwing the covers off the bed--their bed, for two nights. “It was fine,” he says to the floor, putting the cat down. “Where did you put the food? What  _ have _ you been feeding him?” He would sing his love to the Golden City and back, but he has to find the words and the rhythm first.   
  
Merrill looks at him oddly. “You’re happy.”   
  
Kirkwall in autumn is a riot of color and gloom, sea salt and rot coming off the docks, and its people taste of the tomb. Still the sun burns them clean. Anders considers the street scene outside the window before answering. There is still daylight, that perfect gold that illuminates even Darktown for an hour before twilight.   
  
“Yes,” he says. His heart feels full, he can’t even snap at her to leave him alone. Merrill leaves anyway, eying him as she goes, and Anders stands in the middle of the bustle of the clinic and enjoys being home. Lirene is ladling out the evening meal. There are less people gathered than last month, since the dockworkers had gotten a raise. Their faces look less pinched. Perhaps it is the sun pooling in the pit of his stomach, keeping him buoyant, but Anders sees hope there too. He gets to work, chatting with his neighbors, hearing about the little ailments, the fears about the leftover Qunari (who still needed a meal, he’d have to ask Fenris to come with him and invite them over), someone was setting up a school in the alienage but the Ferelden children were invited too. 

  
Night falls and most people clear out, and Anders checks on his chronic patients. Samson always has a bed with him, after everything he has done for Kirkwall’s Circle and the Tranquil in particular, and he is struggling with withdrawal. Anders suspects he steals his lyrium, but he would rather him dose safely than risk an impure strain in the sewers. Reduce harm, he thinks: you can’t take it away entirely, but you can wear away at it. He keeps an eye on him while he makes his rounds.   
  
He is taking inventory of what Athenril left--there is a story in this gift, he suspects, that he’ll never know--when Lirene comes in.   
  
“That elf’s at the door again,” she says. “The grumpy one. You want me to turn him away? I’m going to head out for the night.”   
  
His heart stops, and he can’t help a broad grin from spreading across his face. He wasn’t expecting him to come by, Fenris had told him tomorrow, has he missed him that much? Lirene smiles at the sight of him. She’s glad he’s glad, and Anders is elated. “Fenris?” he says. “Oh no, he’s alright. I’ll get him, you have a great night.”   
  
“More than alright, I’d say,” Lirene murmurs, and she grabs her cloak and dagger and leaves quickly. Anders heads back out to the main room. Samson has fallen asleep in the chair in front of the fire, Maddox standing next to him patiently like Andraste’s mabari himself. Oh, Maker:  _ fuck _ Meredith for ripping him away from himself, his friend, his lover.   
  
“Maddox, you can sit if you want,” Anders says. Tranquil don’t have wants. It is worth a try anyway. Karl managed to break free briefly, that one time. Maybe this would help.   
  
“I am fine,” Maddox says tonelessly. “The fire is acceptable and I do not tire.” He deserves more than that, more than dry bread and a warm fire. He deserves a bed of roses and his lover back, he deserves Samson whole and they both should have gotten a full life, a reliable home, not just a dry spot by the fire in a renegade mage’s clinic where at any moment this could all be shut down. They deserve more. They deserve the world.   
  
He hears a cough, and looks to the door. Fenris is standing awkwardly at the threshold. He has changed back to his usual light armor. He’s cut his hair, too, shaved at the sides and short on top. He looks sharper and older and clearer. Anders loves it. He wants to run his fingers through it.   
  
Fenris says, “I had some unexpected free time and thought you may want some company.” He looks bashful. Anders draws closer, caresses the edge of his jaw. Fenris closes his eyes and leans into the touch.   
  
“I like the hair,” Anders murmurs. He thinks wildly, suddenly: but I haven’t shaved since we left Kirkwall. Before he has time to fret Fenris kisses him, and he sighs as Fenris rakes his nails up his back. Maddox and Samson are behind him, he does not want to think about them. Would Fenris take care of him like Samson takes care of Maddox, or would he leave him like a dog in the streets, like so many have left their broken mage partners? The abandoned mabari take care of them, though, and Samson and some of the others do too. He wouldn’t be left entirely bereft.   
  
“What’s the matter?” Fenris says sharply. “You’re not--you’re thinking about something else.”   
  
Anders holds him closer. “Tranquility,” he says. “Common punishment for mages who have lovers outside the Circle. Inside the Circle they just transfer you, if you’re lucky. I’m just…” He exhales, then burrows his nose in Fenris’ hair. “Brooding. Angry. Afraid. Like I always am. Just--let’s stay like this a moment.” A moment may be all he has. Eventually he can make himself let go. “I didn’t think you were coming tonight.” He tries to remember what he had been doing--taking stock, planning out poultices for the next week, he needs to draw up a kitchen rotation and see what cash Lirene has left, if he has enough to go to the market or if he’ll need to take Hawke with him.   
  
“Are you busy?”   
  
There is always work that needs doing, because if he does not do it, no one will. That is one thing Justice has taught him. If you see something that needs doing, do it, there’s no excuses. Feeling tired already, Anders smiles and says, “I can make time for you.”   
  
They go for a walk, hand in hand, out to the wharves. The lanterns are lit and swinging in the careless breeze. Anders drinks it in. The trees are losing their leaves, but still they shine in the fairy-light. It is cool but not yet cold. Kirkwall is more temperate than Ferelden, and so much less harsh than the Anderfels. Half the city is out and about, everyone has their doors thrown open and there is a card game, a party, a fight at every corner. He waves at his neighbors--Lirene has  _ Thrask _ of all people on her arm, as they sit outside her house with a few tankards. She toasts them as they walk by. Sketch, an apostate friend from the Mages’ Collective, rushes into them, slipping a piece of paper into his pocket as he goes. No one is chasing him. Sketch is always like that. Fenris looks at him curiously, but Anders shakes his head. He is not sure how much he wants him to know.   
  
They make it to the wharves and it is a shock how clean it all is. He remembers the blood staining the cobbles, Kirkwall’s eternal rain. Fenris’ fingers tighten their grasp. Anders looks down and notices the grotting between the stones is clean. Someone spent time scrubbing the battle away. Two people dead, a few maimed, most recovering from their injuries, to fight another day, because there would be another battle, another day. But they won this one, and they will win the next. Kirkwall had wrested itself from its chains. One day the mages will do the same, and he will live to do it.   
  
Justice walks the streets of Kirkwall, hand-in-hand. Fenris stops at the edge of the docks and they sit down, staring out at the bay. Behind them are those awful Tevinter statues, howling in despair. Before them the usual moon glimmers on the water, the second Satinalia moon starting to glimmer. Anders can feel the Veil trembling on his skin. He leans against Fenris. Fenris puts his arm around his waist.   
  
“I am thinking,” Fenris murmurs, “of all my ancestors who must have died here.” Cheery: but Anders is just as morbid. “How many of them looked on this, and prayed to gods who would not answer to save them. To let them leave. And now I am here. And I am choosing to stay.”   
  
The wind ruffles the feathers sewn into Ander’s shawl. He shivers, and Fenris draws him closer. Justice presses behind his eyes, drawn to the surface as they see the procession of those that made them. A ship creaks, moored for the winter, and they know it groans with the memory of so many families, lost. Anders thinks of the mages locked in the Gallows, restless as the Satinalia moon stirs the spirits up, and sighs.   
  
“You take my breath away,” Fenris says suddenly. “I am not good with my words. This is new to me. This is all so new to me. But--you are breath-taking. Your commitment. How much you care. How much it hurts you, and how you persevere. And I like the beard.”   
  
Anders wonders if it would be too much to just push him onto his back and take him there, or let him take him, whatever Fenris preferred, but Fenris made it clear he needed to pace himself, and besides, knowing his luck, Isabela would amble by, or fucking Cullen, one of those blond templar oafs. He kisses him instead, fiercely, intent on making him breathless. He gets a bit carried away, dragging him on top of him, worn planks digging into his back, but Fenris is laughing, and he draws back, sheepish, saying, “Too much?”   
  
But Fenris says, “Just enough, mage. You’re enough.”


End file.
